Turei Metiria: Bail Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Turei Metiria: Bail Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Sitting date: 10 May 2012. Volume:679;Page:2187. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
METIRIA TUREI (Co-Leader—Green) 
: 
 Tena koe Mr Speaker. The Green Party has always supported the integrity of the legal system and worked very hard to improve it. We have more than a decade of history here often standing in a contrary position to many of the other political parties because of our commitment to a principled and genuinely just legal system. We have worked very hard and opposed infringements of citizens’ rights and any attacks on the central tenets of the legal system. Citizens’ rights and their human rights are paramount: the right to a fair trial the right to representation whether you are rich or poor and the right to be treated as though you are innocent until you are proven to be guilty.  
We have had in this House over a number of years many erosions and attempted erosions of these central tenets of our legal system. There was an attack on the right to be present at your own trial under this National Government. We have had continual attacks on legal aid rendering it very difficult for those who are on low incomes to get adequate and proper legal representation and leaving the legal system accessible by the rich and not so much by the poor. And we have had erosions of the principle that a person is innocent until proven guilty and part of that erosion has already ripped into the bail laws. This legislation the Bail Amendment Bill extends that erosion and continues that process of erosion by extending the reverse onus of the burden of proof. We oppose it for that reason.  
What we await from the Law and Order Committee is the analysis that proves that this erosion is both necessary for public safety—that is that it will actually create a safer environment that is identifiable and quantifiable—and the only alternative to legislative change to enable the protection of public safety. We are not convinced by this legislation or by the explanation for it. We also consider that this legislation is a political statement about the legal system not a principled one and not one based on justice.  
The Green Party acknowledges the reoffending rates the issues with bail and the implications for the community when bail is wrongly given. There have been some very serious and terrible cases where New Zealanders have lost their lives and they are tragedies for the families for the communities for the judges who make those decisions that have led to that action and for the whole of the country when the legal system fails individuals and their families. There is no doubt about that or the hardship and the tragedy that is part of that. We also know that the system does have its flaws that not all bail decisions are being made rightly and that not all of the legislative options for providing judges with what they need to make these decisions and the systems to make sure that people do not reoffend are put in place. That also needs to be part of the discussion around what you do with bail rather than justice being this very political act that is set out in this legislation. It certainly is not clear that judges have all of the powers that they need to make the best decisions.  
We also know that New Zealand has one of the highest custodial rates in the Western World—higher than Australia England and Wales. We know that the existing system also has an element of racism in it. So although 6 percent of the prison population of Maori who face a conviction are imprisoned 11 percent are remanded in custody and there is a direct relationship with the extent to which Maori are convicted imprisoned and remanded in custody at a rate significantly higher than that of the Pakeha population. That has never been properly addressed by any Government or any Minister of Justice and continues to be an open wound in New Zealand society.  
There are parts of this system that need to be fixed. This bill is a very blunt tool. It is not yet proven whether it will fix any of them. There is virtually no support for defendants who are released on bail so the current system mostly uses reporting and curfews and yes they are used to control and monitor defendants who are on bail. And where there have been failures in the reporting curfew and monitoring of defendants there have been serious tragedies and New Zealanders have lost their lives as a result.  
 We can identify those very tragic cases but at the same time there are also those other cases of the opportunistic crime that occurs. I am talking about the crime that arises out of people getting bail and being involved in stupid stuff where they do stupid things because there is no support around them to stop it—things like the stupid burglaries that occur; the alcohol-fuelled bad behaviour whether it is violence or other kinds of crime; the drug-fuelled violence and other kinds of crime; the crime that arises out of poverty; and the crime that arises out of insecure and unstable housing where people who have got nowhere to go are behaving in really negative and bad ways that cause harm and crime in the community. We do not have sufficient processes or systems in this country even around alcohol and drug treatment to make sure that people get that treatment when they are remanded on bail to help prevent them from reoffending.  
The question here for the Greens is how we prevent crime from being committed. That is the question that needs to be answered in any consideration of law that concerns the legal system or the justice system—how we stop crimes from being committed in the first place and if they are committed how we stop further crimes from being committed. It involves a range of things. Some of them are very punitive. Some of them do require a person to remain in custody which is the most punitive thing that the legal system can do. Some of them are not punitive such as alcohol and drug treatment anti-violence programmes and support for families and making sure that across the board New Zealanders have access to a decent job and a decent house. Those things are not punitive but they are mechanisms by which we reduce crime. They are ways to stop crime from being committed and therefore to keep our people safer in the short term and in the long term. That has got to be the purpose of the legal system and the justice system.  
Finally the Green Party does take this issue very seriously. At the select committee we will be looking for all of the mechanisms available in the law—all of the mechanisms available in the law—to help prevent the harm caused by crimes committed while a person is on bail to make sure that judges do genuinely have the powers they need and where they do not where there are some gaps to make sure that those gaps are filled. We will look for support for other ways of preventing offending on bail such as some of the community restorative justice programmes and things that I have been talking about previously. Like Labour we are not convinced that this is the right measure to take to deal with the problem and we will be looking for those alternatives at the select committee. Thank you.