Ardern Jacinda: Electronic Monitoring of Offenders Legislation Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeArdern Jacinda: Electronic Monitoring of Offenders Legislation Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 02 June 2015. Volume:706;Page:4241. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]JACINDA ARDERN (Labour):I have to admit that I was not really feeling the passion from Mr McKelvie in that speech yet there was a real opportunity there I felt that perhaps was missed by the speaker when he took his chair. He did reach one of his goals which was giving a 10-minute speech. Beyond that I am not sure what was achieved necessarily with that contribution. You would have thought that the National Party would be briefed—Jacqui Dean: That’s just mean.JACINDA ARDERN: Oh he can take it in his stride. I imagine that there are these briefings that go on in the National caucus that go something like this: “Look team. We know from Crosby/Textor that there are two big issues that we need to hit when times are rough and the PM’s popularity is taking a hit.” Those issues are crime and immigration. They are the go-to issues. They are the go-to issues in Australia. In fact I was not surprised to read that just a year roughly before Tony Abbott took over the lead of Prime Minister in Australia Mark Textor was writing: “Australians have an uncertain outlook when it comes to the future. They believe the country is facing continuing challenges that directly impact their daily lives: jobs cost of living [and] boat people”. I mean are boat people affecting their daily lives? Lo and behold suddenly the Prime Minister’s popularity takes a dive. What do we see him doing? We see him declaring that boat people are on their way to New Zealand.Someone on a boat saying that they are heading to New Zealand is akin to someone saying they are heading to Paris. Just because they said it it does not mean they are going to get there. I have to remind this House that boat people have always been saying that they are heading to New Zealand. In fact under Labour I recall—[Interruption] It does not mean they are going to get here. [Interruption] It goes to the two key goals of the National Party—crime and boat people. That is how it is relevant. I recall a similar threat when Labour was in office. Our concern was that people in Indonesia wanted to head to New Zealand—The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): Order!JACINDA ARDERN: I will just finish this sentence. What did the Immigration Service do? It put out a pamphlet saying that if you try that you will perish. That was the advice then. Now suddenly apparently we need to set up detention centres because everything has changed.Coming back to the crime strategy the Electronic Monitoring of Offenders Legislation Bill which we have before us tonight does certainly have though some things that are worthy of consideration by this House—it does. I will concede that point. The special conditions imposed by the Parole Board—I have to say that that element the amendments to section 15 in clause 4 do appear to simply be clarifying a provision of the bill. But in respect of the electronic monitoring under the Parole Act 2002 the bill provides that the offender “must comply with written instructions from a probation officer that are reasonably necessary for the effective administration of the electronic monitoring”. Instructions might include for example requirements that the offender regularly charges the monitoring equipment.When you have a provision that has that much specificity to it you can assume that there has been some existing issue within current legislation that has required that that occur. That is a bit of an indication. I would be very keen to hear at the select committee examples of where this has been an issue. But how do we ensure for instance that an offender is complying with a regime where they are required to keep their electronic monitor charged? How do you define when the breakdown of equipment for instance or the loss of coverage of monitoring is equipment failure—because we know anecdotally that there have been issues with equipment failure—versus a failure on the part of the offender to recharge said equipment? That is the level of detail we are required to get into because if you are going to have further penalties attached to a provision like this we need to make sure that we are able to differentiate between those two issues.I am also—just a heads-up to the Minister—very keen for us to explore the effectiveness of the equipment in question. We know that some of the contracting for and provision of this equipment has changed. There have been whispers in the street for some time that there have been significant failings. This is a contract that has been delivered via 3M—that is my understanding. We need to ensure if we are extending provisions like this that we have reliability in the technology that we are using.One of the next significant provisions is the pre-sentence reporting for sentences of 20 months or intensive supervision. The bill and I see it states this in the Bills Digest consequently amends the Sentencing Act 2002 which currently specifically excludes electronic monitoring as a possible special condition for a sentence of intensive supervision. I have not gone back through Hansard and it may not have been raised specifically in the House but the Ministry of Justice should be aware of why Parliament specifically excluded electronic monitoring from intensive supervision. Parliament will do that only if there is good cause. It has given that issue consideration. It might simply be by omission but to specifically exclude it speaks to something else. I would be interested to hear more on that and we will be raising it at the select committee.I also want to raise as my colleague Poto Williams has raised that generally electronic monitoring cannot be seen as a substitute for other checks and balances. She rightly used the example of domestic violence and so on but equally at the moment we do have provision for probation officers and the police to have a role in one-to-one contact with offenders and that has other spin-offs to it. Simply relying on technology to play that role means that we will lose out on that ongoing relationship that we need an offender to play with their probation officer. So I would not want to see those checks reduced—that one-to-one engagement reduced—simply because we have extra conditions that are able to apply for electronic monitoring.The area I want to spend most of my remaining moments on is the provisions around offenders sentenced to imprisonment for short terms. At the moment there is a prohibition on the imposition by the court of an electronic monitoring condition in respect of sentences of less than 24 months but only in respect of a whereabouts condition and not a residential condition. I think it is right that we reconsider that provision because as has been raised in the House there are examples perhaps of issues of harassment of stalking and of domestic violence where it would be useful to have the ability to put these electronic monitoring conditions in place. My question is: why does the bill not specifically set out a set of relevant offences rather than specifying a time frame? Rather than saying “24 months or less” why are we not being sentence-specific? We do this in a lot of other areas—for instance extended supervision orders and so on. It is not unheard-of to say well if we are mostly concerned that this is a provision that affects domestic violence situations why not be specific about that? That might stop it from being overused potentially in the courts if that is indeed a concern. So I would like to explore that at select committee as well.We are also very mindful of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act assessment by the Attorney-General. Under that New Zealand Bill of Rights Act report this bill fails but it fails on counts where we have failed before. Extended supervision orders already test the boundaries of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act and because this bill relates again to the use of electronic monitoring for extended supervision orders it is natural that it fails too. But we in this House should never—never—be complacent about New Zealand Bill of Rights Act failures. It is our obligation to make sure that we truly believe that it is warranted and that is a test we need to maintain at select committee.My final point is that if some of these provisions are intended to assist for instance with domestic violence situations they still rely on an offender a perpetrator entering into the criminal justice system. Yet we know presently that changes in Crown Law’s Prosecution Guidelines mean that we are not seeing as many offenders being arrested. We are seeing potentially the poor use of police safety orders. In all of those cases the flow-on effect is that because funding follows a sentence or a court process or a referral through a court process we are not necessarily seeing some of those mechanisms being used. This is another mechanism that relies on an offender going through the criminal justice system so we need to be mindful that that means that we may not be picking up everyone who would potentially benefit from such monitoring in those cases.