Goff Phil: Prisoners’ and Victims’ Claims (Continuation and Reform) Amendment Bill — Second Reading In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeGoff Phil: Prisoners’ and Victims’ Claims (Continuation and Reform) Amendment Bill — Second Reading In Committee[Sitting date: 08 May 2013. Volume:689;Page:9748. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon PHIL GOFF (Labour—Mt Roskill): I would just like to pick up on a couple points that my colleague David Clendon has made. This legislation the Prisoners’ and Victims’ Claims (Continuation and Reform) Amendment Bill in my view is not about saying that people who offend lose all their rights when they go to prison and that they have no rights. I think that is a misconceived view of why this was introduced. I guess I am in a reasonable position to know why it was introduced because I did the introduction. What I said when I introduced this bill I still believe. I want to read it out because I think it is pertinent. I said that most people believe that it is wrong that offenders should be compensated for wrongful treatment but in turn are not required to pay restitution to the victims they harmed. This arose from theTaunoa case and the behaviour modification regime. That regime was wrongful and it has been done away with but the people who were in there were amongst the worst offenders. The damage they did physically and emotionally to their victims was intense and they were going to collect tens of thousands of dollars for their rights being harmed. I did not believe then and I do not believe now that if you have harmed somebody else and you get a windfall compensation you should not be required in turn to compensate your victims. Part 1 of this bill keeps that provision in place and I believe rightly so.I am not arguing at all that the Department of Corrections is above the law; if it breaks the law it needs to be called to heel. It must operate under the law. There are provisions that enable that to happen. When we put the Corrections Bill through in 2004 that set up an internal complaints procedure. I disagree with David Clendon that that does not work. We also put through in 2007 under the Crimes of Torture Act the role of the Ombudsman to be designated as the national preventative mechanism where two inspectors appointed by the Ombudsman regularly go through the prisons to examine the conditions and the treatment of inmates. It is putting the fence at the top of the cliff not a compensation regime at the bottom that is really important. So the first point is that.The second point is that this legislation actually does not prevent any claim for compensation being accepted by the court. The court simply has to do a number of things first. It must first consider whether there are remedies other than compensation that should be employed in dealing with a claim by the prisoner. It must consider whether the prisoner made reasonable use of the complaints procedure and was not trying to milk the system. That is fair enough. It said that compensation should be reserved for exceptional cases when it was necessary to provide effective redress and that is fair enough. For those reasons I am comfortable with the fact that this bill remains in force. What I am not comfortable with and what Part 1 of the bill does not address is that we are limiting the payments of compensation to victims by criminal offenders to an ever-decreasing number of people. Hopefully when we stop abuses that might occur within the corrections system there will be no grants but does that mean to say we do not have to look at the wider problem which is that most victims never receive a cent in reparation or compensation from their offenders? If we have inmate A who wins Lotto and gets a million dollars does that mean to say he should never have to pay back that money to the victim to whom he did so much damage?The other example I used is the example of a white-collar offender. They do have the human resources that would enable them ultimately to compensate their victims. Part 1 does not address the problem of the privileged white-collar offender who goes to jail for 2 years gets out goes back to living in the mansion and driving the flash car has all sorts of resources in the family trust and leaves thousands of victims of his offending which robbed them of their life savings never being able to get compensation from their offender. In the original legislation we had sunset clauses. Those sunset clauses called for a review. This part does not actually act on the original legislation. It does not provide for an extension of a system that looks to the interests of the victim. I am in the position of criticising this Government because it has overlooked the opportunity to do something meaningful to help thousands of victims of criminal offenders who never get reparation and who never see restorative justice where the offender is never required to put it right for the victim. This measure is supported by us because in a very limited range of cases there is good cause to say that if the offender gets compensation from the State they may have to pay that to their victim. But it does not say that the vast majority of offenders when they have the ability to do so should repay their victim and make reparation. This bill does nothing to allow justice to happen in that way.The bill that originally went through Parliament asked for a review. Each time when we had to extend the legislation the Government failed to ever put that review into effect. It failed to use its imagination. It failed in terms of commitment and determination to do something on behalf of victims. That is why this is regarded by Labour as weak as half-hearted and as inadequate. Yes what it keeps in place is OK but it does not extend what it put in place. It is not wrong to expect of any criminal offender blue-collar or white-collar if they are in a position to do so to make reparations to their victim. They may not be in a position to do so at the time ofsentencing or while they are in prison but if the circumstances arise where it becomes possible for them to provide compensation then surely they should be required under common sense and any principle of justice to set things right for the victim.Time and again we have heard the rhetoric on the election trail about the need to look after the interests of the victim. When this National Government had the opportunity to do a review and to find ways that we could require the offender to compensate the victim it came up short. In the course of this debate we have not heard from the Minister of Justice. Perhaps the Minister would like to address this: why did the Government not utilise the opportunity provided under the legislation for a review to do a review and to consult with the Opposition as the Minister at the time promised? She broke that promise. She reneged on that promise. The Government has been complacent. It has said: “Well we’ll keep this in place. Labour introduced it. We’ll keep it in place but we won’t do anything more.” That relegates thousands of victims across our country to be in a position of never having hope that they will get a fair redress of the injustice done to them by requiring the person who did that injustice to set things right. What more could we ask from a system of justice than it restore the position of the victim?This is a lost opportunity. This maintains the status quo; it does not extend it. It relegates compensation payments to an ever-dwindling number of people who might get compensation because of breach by the State of its responsibilities. It does nothing to protect or enhance the position of the victim. That is why although we will support it because it keeps in place a limited measure that I introduced it does not take the opportunity to extend it to provide a better a fairer and a more just outcome for victims. Shame on the Government for not taking that opportunity.