Collins Judith: Sentencing and Parole Reform Bill — In Committee 
Collins Judith: Sentencing and Parole Reform Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:663;Page:10933] 
Hon JUDITH COLLINS (Minister of Corrections) 
: 
 That was an amazing contribution from Clayton Cosgrove the member who has just resumed his seat. He quoted as his authority for his rather ridiculous statements page 14 of the bill. I have to say that page 14 is written by the Hon Clayton Cosgrove; it is his own statement in his minority report for the bill. He says that that is the authority for his ridiculous statements which I have just proven quite wrong. There is a thing known by some sort of phrase but we will not use it because it is probably unparliamentary. But to quote oneself as an authority for a statement— 
Hon Clayton Cosgrove 
: I raise a point of order Mr Chairperson. There is a very clear ruling about misrepresentations. The quote from the bill is not from me; it is from a Cabinet paper contained within a minority report. Those are not my words; they are quoted from a Cabinet paper. That member is misrepresenting the position and she knows it. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy) 
: I am not sure that that is a point of order. The Minister will continue. The member still has further calls where he can rebut; this is a debate. 
Hon JUDITH COLLINS 
: I think it is very important that when one is quoting a Cabinet paper to quote it in context and state exactly what it is. When one says that there is a Ministry of Justice statement that is fine; there is a Ministry of Justice statement. But the member should not come to the Chamber and say therefore that it is my department saying it. It is not; it is the Ministry of Justice. He should be absolutely straightforward with the Committee and not get down to that sort of nonsense. [ 
Interruption 
] Those members opposite obviously do not like to hear that because they are bellowing away. 
Another thing the member dealt with was an issue of—[ 
Interruption 
] No he did not want to talk about parole. He was saying that no Labour members were not soft on crime which is good to hear because they have just had 9 years to prove it but we have not noticed that much of a drop in crime after 9 years of Labour Government. I did notice though that they left us with not enough prison cells for prisoners. They knew what the forecast was but they did not bother to house the extra prisoners. Labour members did not put the extra funding into parole so that parole provisions could be dealt with properly. Instead they left the Department of Corrections in an utter mess mostly around their lack of funding. One of the first things we had to do— 
Hon Steve Chadwick 
: I raise a point of order Mr Chairperson. I thought the Minister was responding to Part 2 of the bill before the Committee rather than to the previous 9 years. 
Hon Clayton Cosgrove 
: That’s fair enough. You made the ruling actually Mr Assistant Chairperson. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy) 
: I did. The Minister is not the first person to transgress that tonight but she may be transgressing it a little more broadly than some other people have. I think it is a timely reminder. I was actually just starting to look up the bill to see what Part 2 said. 
Hon JUDITH COLLINS 
: Part 2 is all about parole so I think that it is very important to talk about the fact that we need to have proper resourcing for parole because otherwise as under the previous Minister Phil Goff all sorts of people are stuck on parole and into community service but without the resourcing. If someone does that unfortunately we will have more problems with parole. But I am very confident that the parole provisions in this bill are sensible. They are very clear and it is very important to understand that when we are dealing with violent recidivist offenders they need to know that there are boundaries and that parole is not a right under this administration; it is a privilege.