Tanczos Nandor: Prisoners' and Victims' Claims Bill — Second Reading 
Tanczos Nandor: Prisoners' and Victims' Claims Bill — Second Reading 
[Volume:625;Page:20567] 
NANDOR TANCZOS (Green) 
: 
 I start by saying that I think all people—certainly all members of the Justice and Electoral Committee—agree that the circumstances that gave rise to those compensation claims should not happen. I think all members of the select committee were moved by the position taken by the victims who appeared before it to speak on the bill. None of them took the view that inmates deserve whatever they get and that there should be no sanction for the abuse of prisoners when they are in the custody of the Department of Corrections. That is right because of course that view would lead to the atrocities we see occurring in many prisons around the world. For that reason the Greens very strongly support one recommendation of the select committee—outlined in our commentary—that the Government should begin some scoping work to investigate the setting up of an independent prison complaints authority. 
Of course that is not a new idea—it has been advocated for a very long time by organisations like the Howard League for Penal Reform. During the passage of the Corrections Bill there were some very strong submissions to the Law and Order Committee calling for an independent prison complaints authority. It is something that the Green Party has been outspoken on for quite a long time. I know that there has been some examination of it by the Government and I commend that. 
It is important that some of that work begins although there have been changes in the way the Department of Corrections works. Amendments have been made to the Corrections Act and the Greens were instrumental in adding some safeguards into that Act. The Department of Corrections has a new chief executive and I think we all await with interest the effect that man will have on the culture within the prison service. 
But it is clear that the best protection against compensation claims is to stop these abuses happening in prisons. That is one of the few things that the Greens support in terms of the report back from the select committee. We do not support this bill. We believe that the only real way to get the Department of Corrections to clean up its act is to ensure that there is an effective remedy for inmates who are abused when they are in the custody of the State. 
Really that is all that the international conventions are saying—that there must be an effective remedy. When we are talking about the power of the State being brought to bear on people within its custody there are very few real levers that can be used. There are very few ways of cleaning up a department that is as monolithic closed-shop and secretive as the Department of Corrections has shown itself to be. The Greens very strongly believe that we must maintain provision for an effective remedy. I know that some parties in this House are not interested in international conventions. They pay no regard to them—at least when they are in Opposition and at least verbally. Tim Barnett has pointed out the position of the National Party which denounces international conventions when in Opposition but of course when it is in Government it upholds them because it knows that it is not just a question of rhetoric in the House; it is about the standing of this country Aotearoa in the eyes of the world and that is important. 
Yet some parties have no interest in international obligations and assert that they should not be a constraining influence on the Government. That is not something the Green Party supports. In fact I would call that the George W Bush view of international relations—the idea that those international conventions and protections apply only to the people we like and not to the people we do not like. That is the path to Guantanamo Bay; that is the path to Abu Ghraib. International conventions are an important measuring stick against which we as parliamentarians can evaluate the legislation we pass. In contradiction to what Marc Alexander said it is our commitment to human rights conventions that is enduring not the variable whims of the Government of the day. 
I will read some words from the submission made by Victim Support because I think they sum up the Green Party position extremely well. I ask members to excuse me for reading from something that is available to them but I know that they are too busy to read the submissions made to every select committee we have. I think that members listening to the debate will find these words particularly instructive. As I said this is from the submission made by Victim Support: 
“That a prisoner should receive compensation for a breach of rights when the victim of that individual’s original offending has had no such acknowledgment or received no redress for the harm they have suffered is repugnant to Victim Support and to what seems to be most of the New Zealand population. Such a blatant imbalance of rights would offend the sensibilities of even the most demure of persons as reflected by the way in which it appears to have already raised the ire of most of the community at large—a situation in which the mass media has undoubtedly added further fuel. Victim Support does not however accept that the remedy for the situation lies within the provisions contained in the Prisoners’ and Victims’ Claims Bill.” 
The submission further states: “The solution to the situation lies not in lessening the rights of victims of abuse of power to seek redress for harm done but in strengthening the rights and abilities of victims of crime to access restitution or compensation for the harm done to them. Putting it simply two wrongs don’t make a right. As a society we should be more intent on preventing abuses of power from occurring than on mitigating against the obligation to provide compensation when it does. Any softening of our intolerance to abuse of power and corruption not only increases the vulnerability of individuals but diminishes the moral and social fabric of our society which will ultimately result in more victims.” I think that that is a very powerful message to the members of this House who say that we should just strip prisoners of all rights of redress. 
The submission goes on to state: “Victim Support strongly recommends that a fund be established whereby offenders can access a loan from the State similar to that provided to students to enable them to pay immediately any reparation awarded to the victim. In this way any windfall received by the offender be it through compensation for harm done while incarcerated or through winning the lottery could be legitimately claimed by Government as repayment of the debt owed. Such a scheme is inherently fairer to all victims and does not diminish the rights of any individual.” 
Although I am not sure that that is exactly the answer the select committee did actually spend a lot of time looking at how one could provide a scheme that genuinely addressed the harm suffered by victims that did not provide restitution on the basis of whether the offender who harmed them had been abused while in custody and therefore got a payout but that treated victims of crime equally according to the harm that was done to them. We spent quite a bit of time and I was quite hopeful that we might come up with a solution that would allow the Greens to support a measure that would genuinely put the interests of victims first without taking away the obligation and the necessity for a right of remedy for people who are abused while in the power of the State. I think it is unfortunate that we were not able to do that; it is outside the scope of this bill and it would take an enormous amount of policy work. So we accept that it cannot be done as part of this bill. 
We think it is a shame that that was not the approach taken by the Government. We think that would have been a lot better. I think the select committee is very concerned to do some further work on how we can genuinely advance the role of victims within the criminal justice system. Of course it is the view of the Green Party that as long as we retain an adversarial system of justice the rights of victims will always be in second place.