Logie Jan: Prisoners’ and Victims’ Claims (Continuation and Reform) Amendment Bill — Second Reading In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeLogie Jan: Prisoners’ and Victims’ Claims (Continuation and Reform) Amendment Bill — Second Reading In Committee[Sitting date: 08 May 2013. Volume:689;Page:9744. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]JAN LOGIE (Green): I rise to add another voice in opposition to this Prisoners’ and Victims’ Claims (Continuation and Reform) Amendment Bill on behalf of the Green Party. We are not supporting this bill because we have a sense of justice and a belief in human rights and we believe that victims’ rights are absolutely critical regardless of whether they are in or out of prison.I would also like to just remind this House as have many others before me of the intended review that has never happened. If this Government was truly interested in victims’ rights then that review would have happened and we would have had legislation that evolved out of a review that was evidence-based and considered the actual needs of victims and what would make a difference to them. This legislation does nothing towards actually addressing the needs of victims.We have heard about the gaps in terms of white-collar crime and recompense to victims. That point has been made very eloquently I think by my Labour colleagues but I would also like to draw to the attention of this House the work that was shelved by this Government on the inadequacy of our system in addressing the needs of victims of sexual abuse in this country. There was a huge review done by the Law Commission on looking at alternative pre-trial and trial processes to improve the ability of sexual abuse victims to get justice in our courts. We have a system that denies justice to about 99 percent of sexual abuse victims in this country and this Government after months—and decades in fact—of work on that issue just decided to shelve it because it was not a priority and because some of the ideas in that review were contentious. Not many of them were—a huge number of them in fact had agreement—but some of them were contentious so this Government shelved it.Where in that is any concern for the victim? It is a joke to put this forward in front of this House and pretend that this Government cares about victims when the most major piece of work that would have helped improve justice for victims in this country was shelved with no adequate reason being given for it.Another reason that we are opposing this bill is actually the point I made earlier: that we see prisoners being able to be victims. It is a very basic principle. This bill will have the perverse result of making prisoners less likely to report torture and will take away incentives for our corrections systems to create the safe environments that would mean that this legislation was completely unnecessary.Although New Zealanders may have a gut reaction and think that it is unfair that these people who may have done terrible things are now getting a payout from the Government that train of thinking is focused on what happened to somebody outside of prison that was done by this person and it misses the situation of that prisoner having been victimised by our State. The case that led to this was a case of extreme torture thatwas perpetuated by the State and I am very pleased to see the Government now taking action in terms of helping to protect hopefully transgender prisoners in New Zealand who we know are being sexually abused in our prisons at the moment.The State has a duty to protect prisoners. That is a basic basic part of human rights and we know that we are not going to have safer communities if we have prisoners who feel that they are in turn being victimised by the State. That is not going to lead to them feeling as if they have something to contribute to our society and something to give back to the community if they are alienated through the rehabilitative process. So there are many reasons that the Greens are opposing this bill and at heart it is because we care about victims.