Clendon David: Prisoners’ and Victims’ Claims (2012 Expiry and Application Dates) Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Clendon David: Prisoners’ and Victims’ Claims (2012 Expiry and Application Dates) Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
[Sitting date: 21 June 2012. Volume:681;Page:3248. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
DAVID CLENDON (Green) 
: 
 I am pleased to take a call on the Prisoners’ and Victims’ Claims (2012 Expiry and Application Dates) Amendment Bill and pick up from the final comments of the previous speaker. I would like to begin by talking about the process. It has been pointed out that we have a 9-day deadline before us. That is an extraordinary thing when one considers that we are talking about an amendment to substantive legislation that was enacted in 2005 some 7 years ago. This Government has had complete control of the legislative programme of the House programme for 3½ years and we hear today from the Leader of the House that next week the House will be in extended hours and will potentially sit under urgency. One of the bills that we must use these longer hours for is this bill the Prisoners’ and Victims’ Claims (2012 Expiry and Application Date) Amendment Bill. It is an extraordinary failure of political management and of legislative management after 7-odd years to have to rely on extended hours or potentially urgency to deal with a deadline that was flagged so long ago. It is a remarkable failure. 
Tim Macindoe 
: The member’s confused. 
DAVID CLENDON 
: Well I am told I am a confused member. In fact I invite the member to do the sums—12 minus 5 does equal 7 and always has. The fact is that we are running up against a deadline and it is a failure of legislative and of political management. That is undeniable. 
Further the process has been truncated. This bill was introduced a couple of months ago at the beginning of a parliamentary adjournment. Very few members of civil society few of the interested NGOs and few of the organisations who would take an interest in this sort of bill had any idea that it was coming forward. The Government used its numbers to force a truncated select committee process. Barely 6 weeks were allowed for the select committee process and it is only through a change in the Standing Orders that we had any opportunity to even debate that. I am pleased that the Labour Party and the Mana Party supported the Greens in opposing that motion to have such an extraordinarily short select committee process. It is a very undemocratic and a very sloppy way to progress legislation. The Government should be ashamed of that failure to manage this better. 
The principal Act the Prisoners’ and Victims’ Claims Act 2005 which we are changing was very well described by Mr Chauvel who in his first reading speech described it as an experimental piece of legislation. As he did explain that earlier I will not repeat that in any detail. That legislation did come from the behaviour management regime and the systematic abuse and torture of inmates in one of our largest prisons. The climate of the day saw significant objection to and some disquiet about prisoners’ receiving monetary compensation despite their having proven a case of abuse and torture. This legislation that we are amending was the result of that. The reality is that at the time the principal Act was supported by the Greens and I suspect in part by other parties because it was clearly flagged there would be a substantive review and for that reason there was a deadline a sunset clause in the legislation. One of the things promised at the time was an independent prison inspectorate which in fact we never did get. It is true that the Office of the Ombudsmen does have dedicated officers who do a very good job of monitoring prisons and dealing with prisoner complaints. That is an issue that we can return to. The reality is there has been ample time to review the situation. 
The continuance of this legislation—and it has been clearly flagged by the Government that it is its intention to embed this legislation—indicates that the Government is expecting that there will be ongoing examples of abuse of prisoners in our prisons while they are in custody and that we need to ensure that they cannot receive any sort of monetary compensation in the event of such abuse occurring. That is an extraordinary assumption to make given that the Department of Corrections has changed. We have seen reform of the corrections system. There is a great deal yet to do it must be said but I do not think that the situation that arose in the early 2000s would be tolerated today or would be possible. If there is abuse of inmates then those responsible should be taken to task and we would argue that inmates should continue to be eligible for some compensation for that. 
We were told by the Minister of Justice in her first reading speech that the need for this temporary legislation was pressing because otherwise “There would be a clear incentive for potential claimants to file their claims during this window [of opportunity]” which she said would “defeat the purpose of the current regime”. She went on to say: “The new bill will prevent the unfair window of opportunity from occurring that would disadvantage victims of crime.” That is an extraordinarily narrow interpretation of the notion of fairness. What about fairness for the people who were indeed originally denied their human rights who were abused in custody and who were deemed to have suffered torture? What about their rights? They too were victims of crime and their right to be compensated was taken away from them. The continuance of this experimental legislation—well described—embedding the regime of zero compensation because that is what it will do is an admission that this Government does expect further abuse and misbehaviour within the corrections system and I think that the Minister of Corrections should be quite concerned about that. 
The point has been very well made by the previous speaker that the regulatory impact statement was clearly done in considerable haste and indeed the submission from the New Zealand Law Society highlighted that there are probably fairly substantial errors of fact in it. I mean no disrespect to the officials involved. It is simply that they were not given adequate time to do a good job which is what we normally expect and see from them. The Law Society has also pointed out that the original legislation was never subject to a New Zealand Bill of Rights Act section 7 report and nor has this continuance legislation been subject to that. It is simply an extension of a regime that was always intended to expire. It should be allowed to expire. It has served whatever useful purpose it may have had. There is clearly a contingent liability on the Government of the day if new claims were to emerge from the period of the early 2000s. That is a reality and the Government should basically front up and wear that cost rather than continue with what is a very unfortunate piece of legislation. This bill perpetuates two very perverse incentives. It could in a very perverse way actively encourage or almost give licence for the abuse of inmates given that it is most unlikely that those inmates would see particular value in making claims against the State for any abuse that they suffered in prison. The second is that it seems perverse that anybody should benefit from the abuse torture or mistreatment of prisoners while they are inmates of the State. 
Our international obligations have always been compromised by this legislation. It is true that Article 8 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights guarantees “the right to an effective remedy” and article 2 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights does something similar. It demands that people whose human rights have been compromised ought to be entitled to an effective remedy from the State which is responsible for that. It cannot be accepted at any level that absolute denial of any compensation or possibility of any monetary compensation coming to a person whose human rights were compromised could be seen as meeting the international obligations that New Zealand has accepted as signatory to those international agreements documents and conventions. 
When first passed this was a very marginal piece of legislation. The Greens supported it originally only on the understanding that there would be a rigorous and timely review and the installation of an independent prison inspectorate. None of those has occurred. This is very poor process for a very poor piece of legislation that we will continue to oppose.