Street Maryan: Victims’ Orders Against Violent Offenders Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeStreet Maryan: Victims’ Orders Against Violent Offenders Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 16 April 2014. Volume:698;Page:17377. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon MARYAN STREET (Labour): I take a short call on the first part of the Victims’ Orders Against Violent Offenders Bill. Every now and then we pass pieces of legislation here that have the potential to have a really dramatic and worthwhile impact on people’s lives. I just want to go back to the original purpose of the bill as was stated in I think the Bills Digest actually. The essential purpose was that the bill “provides that a victim may apply to a District Court for a non-contact order in respect of a violent offender and that an application may be made at any time after the offender is released from prison. However a victim may not apply for a non-contact order if there is in force a protection order against the offender under the Domestic Violence Act … or a restraining order against the offender under the Harassment Act …”. This really touches on the lives of many women and I just want to draw the Committee’s attention to them for a moment.In Nelson we have seen an increase in the instances of violent crime. In the latest statistics that were released recently there was much cause for celebration as crime statistics were going down but not sexual or violent offending statistics. Whether that is a function of more women being prepared to report violent crimes against them and sexual offences against them whether it is in fact a greater level of assiduousness on the part of the police who are very committed to bringing perpetrators of sexual and violent offences to book or whether it is that there are indeed more offences occurring and there is more crime in this area nobody is entirely sure. So out of those three possible reasons nobody has sufficient evidence to say which is the dominant contributing factor. Are more crimes happening are we reporting them more or are the police better at dealing with and resolving these crimes?I think the prospect of having somebody who has violently and sexually assaulted a person be released from prison and wash up in close proximity either to where the victim works or lives is arevictimising of the victim. Hopefully and I believe that it will this bill will address that issue and will give—and it is women I think of in particular. Before anybody gets up and says that males are victims too I know that but predominantly it is women. And to the women whom I talk to who work with women’s centres sexual abuse counselling services Rape Crisis and all of those chronically underfunded bodies that are out there in the community trying to assist women to cobble together again the fractured parts of their lives I want to say that this bill will help; it will provide some protection from therevictimising that can happen in these instances. The case in Invercargill has been the one that has had attention drawn to it in particular but it is not the only one. Sometimes it does take a ghastly case of that nature before Parliament moves to take action and repair the wrong and fill the gap that exists in the legislation and the legislation’s authority.One of the things that I particularly approve of in this bill—I was not a member of the Law and Order Committee which this bill came to and nor did I hear the submissions—but one of the things that I think is a positive outcome is that “victim” is defined in a way that I trust is consistent with legislation we have been debating just in the last hour and a half. The victim is a person against whom a violent offence iscommitted by another person is a parent or legal guardian of a child or a young person who has had an offence committed against them or is a member of the immediate family of a person who has had that violence perpetrated upon them. There is a caveat in that definition of course that says that obviously if the parent legal guardian or family member is in fact the one charged with such offences then clearly they are not the victim in this instance. But it is good to see that there is a recognition that the shock waves of these sorts of crimes go through families and remain in place for a long time. And it takes a long time to recover to regain and repair a fractured life and to begin to approach the world again as a whole person. Having family and the impact on them recognised as well—with the proviso of course that they are not the perpetrators—is a useful supportive device.I will take another call later on other parts of the bill but as far as Part 1 up to the end of clause 6 is concerned I think those are the most significant points. Thank you.