Franks Stephen: Prisoners’ and Victims’ Claims Bill — In Committee Procedure Third Reading 
Franks Stephen: Prisoners’ and Victims’ Claims Bill — In Committee Procedure Third Reading 
[Volume:626;Page:21004] 
STEPHEN FRANKS (ACT) 
: 
 Part 3 of the Prisoners’ and Victims’ Claims Bill should have been the part wherein the Government grasped a nettle that the National Government was too afraid to grasp. When  
Baigent’s 
 case introduced into the scheme of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act a right that judges had been developing all on their own—a right for financial compensation for breach of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act—we had judicial lawmaking at its most naked. That remedy had in fact been considered by Parliament and discarded. When the Law Commission was asked to comment it was predictable that the commission—part of that same cosy establishment part of the “anointed” in the justice establishment—would decide that it was a good idea to let judges run free. Now we are seeing part of the price. It is not that judges are not well meaning it is not that they do not see a need but there should have been a legislative response that said to them that when that kind of invention occurs and when Parliament had clearly not intended it Parliament should act. 
Part 3 is the place that should see a reversal of the decision in  
Baigent’s 
 case. If there is not enough courage on the part of the Government to reverse it completely it should at the least have reversed it in relation to prisoners’ claims. What we would have had was what I have moved in my amendment to this part: a simple statement that in relation to proceedings to do with prisoners’ treatment the Employment Relations Act the Harassment Act the Human Rights Act the Privacy Act and the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act will not give rise to orders for compensation or damages. That is very straightforward and it is consistent with our constitutional theory. Our constitution assumes that if Parliament does not like what judges are doing it changes it. But instead this Government and the last Government were too afraid to take it on. They were too afraid to assert that the people who make the law should be subject to being sacked by the people—that legislators should make the law not judges. So we will see $500000 spent in this Budget year and $379000 at least in each of the next 3 years on a tribunal that will be presiding over next to nothing. 
I was glad that the Associate Minister took a call to explain where the assurance was that victims would have access to the proceeds of book sales Lotto wins and inheritances. He said it is because the limitation period is being expanded—that is the limitations will not run while prisoners are in jail. But that is only a small part of the problem for prisoners. They will not have access to those windfalls unless we also suspend or change the rules that prevent suing under the accident compensation scheme; or unless we make sure that when a windfall comes to a prisoner or ex-prisoner someone knows about it; or unless we make sure that those prisoners cannot divert their entitlements. For example as Judith Collins mentioned we could have had some anti-avoidance provisions. None of that work has been done. 
In this bill we see only enough to pass muster as a smokescreen of apparent action. There is no real commitment to prisoners’ interests. There is not the beefing-up of the role of Victim Support that the Minister of Justice foreshadowed on 4 October when it was contemplated that there might be a role for such organisations as advocates. No victims will be left to look at litigation against those people who have wounded them and they will have to do that on their own resources with all the current fears of throwing good money after bad. 
There is a little bit of a relaxation of entitlement under legal aid. From what has been set out in this legislation I cannot tell whether it will mean anything to any people other than those who are too poor to qualify at present. But whether it reaches back into what people call the middle classes—those who currently cannot afford litigation because only the poor and the rich can afford litigation—we cannot tell. 
So I urge members to vote for the amendment I have put forward which includes a new section 179A of the Corrections Act. It will be the only change to that Act in this bill. We might have thought this bill would be a substantial rethink of what the Government has done but instead it has had its entire attention focused on getting rid of private involvement in the Auckland Central Remand Prison.