Moroney Sue: Returning Offenders (Management and Information) Bill — In Committee Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeMoroney Sue: Returning Offenders (Management and Information) Bill — In Committee Third Reading[Sitting date: 17 November 2015. Volume:710;Page:8124. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]SUE MORONEY (Labour): What a shambles. What a shambles this bill is. I am going to start by talking about the commencement date to start off with because I think that that is the part that shows what a complete shambles the Government has made of dealing with this issue. The commencement date for this bill should have been about this time last year quite frankly because that is when the Government says that it was informed by the Australian Government that it was making the law change that was going to bring these supposed returning offenders back onto our shores. Yet they were being brought here and have been for almost 12 months now without any supervision without any of this so-called management and information that this bill puts in place.I want to share a story about how this bill is too late because the commencement clause should have been a lot earlier than this. I know that because in about August this year I went and visited People at Risk Solutions in Hamilton. That is the service that used to provide rehabilitation services for prisoners when they leave prison here in New Zealand. I say that they used to provide that because in fact that organisation has declined to take up the Government’s new contract in that area because it is so appalled at what the Government is requiring in terms of that contract. But I will come back to that point a little later on.The Hamilton People at Risk Solutions told me in August that it had had a number of these people who had been deported from Australia to New Zealand just cold calling it rocking up to its doorstep and telling it that they had arrived. They had been deported back they had no family they had no support services and they were knocking on the door of the People at Risk Solutions organisation in Hamilton saying: “Please help us.”The reason they were doing that was that they had been told by the Australian authorities that the People at Risk Solutions service in New Zealand would help them. That is what they were told when they were forced to leave the Australian shores. “Go and see the PARS service.” the Australian authorities said. “They will help you.” Well the Hamilton People at Risk Solutions service did help those people because it felt so sorry for them—they were in desperate need of support—but it had no funding to do that. It had no prior notice that it was going to be required to do that.This is a service that is struggling to survive because of the bad contracting regime that this Government has put in place for prisoners coming out of New Zealand services. It would not sign up to that contract. Here it was a service that had shed staff very recently because it was principled enough to not sign the dodgy contract that the Government had put in front of it to continue to provide that service for people leaving New Zealand prisons. Here it was having to struggle to provide that service for these so-called returning offenders whom it knew nothing about. There had been nothing put in place for the management of those people and they have been coming back to New Zealand since the beginning of this year Minister Adams. What were you doing? What were you doing all of that time?Hon Member: What was she doing?SUE MORONEY: I am sorry. To the Minister I ask what was the Minister doing all of that time while those people were returning in ones and twos and threes and fours to New Zealand’s shores without any support mechanisms in place and without the forethought of the New Zealand Government to do anything for their plight?That is not only a problem for those people in that situation but that is a problem for New Zealand society. We know that people have been in these dreadful situations where they have been deported. They have been in the sorts of conditions that Kelvin Davis witnessed over in Christmas Island. They have served their time. They have then been thrown into detention centres without any certainty about how long they were going to be there. What I have heard as Labour’s immigration spokesperson is that many of these people found the conditions in these detention centres particularly on Christmas Island to be more dangerous than—The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Come back to the bill.SUE MORONEY: —what they had been seeing in prison so they felt less safe. The reason why I raised that is that it is directly related to the commencement clause. These people were not getting the support from the New Zealand Government when they arrived in New Zealand and yet they had been in these very dangerous situations—traumatised arriving on our shores without any help. I am going to divulge—