O'Rourke Denis: Returning Offenders (Management and Information) Bill — First Reading Second Reading In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeO'Rourke Denis: Returning Offenders (Management and Information) Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee[Sitting date: 17 November 2015. Volume:710;Page:8043. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]DENIS O’ROURKE (NZ First): New Zealand First will support this bill through all its stages. Offenders have of course been returned to New Zealand over many years without too much difficulty and New Zealand no doubt has returned offenders to Australia in the same way. But never has there been an occasion involving the sheer number of people to be returned to New Zealand from Australia that we are about to see in the next few weeks or months or indeed years.We first need to ask the question: what has changed that this should now be happening and why do we now need this bill? What has changed of course is Australian law and more important what has changed is the Australians’ approach to human rights issues altogether concerning their non-citizen residents. Whether we like it or not the Australians are deporting people who should in fact not be subject to deportation because they have resided in Australia for many years—many of them for well over 10 years. Some would have arrived as infants. Many have their families in Australia their homes there their jobs there and their lives there. They are in every true sense really Australians despite their New Zealand citizenship. They are not New Zealanders by choice and have very little connection with New Zealand.Nevertheless these people are coming back and we will need to deal with that situation in the way that this bill or something like it proposes. Many have actually committed only minor crimes and some indeed may well have committed no crimes at all. It is actually doubtful in many cases whether their wrongdoing justifies deportation and one of the things we will need to consider in this bill is whether the regime that is to be applied to them here in New Zealand would be justified either. Most of these people will actually be punished twice as a result of what the Australians are doing in creating the need for the situation to be dealt with in this bill. The long-term residents who are being deported have committed crimes in Australia as the product of Australian society not as the product of New Zealand society so should it not actually be the Australians who deal with the aftermath of that and not New Zealand? Nevertheless we have to deal with the situation as it actually is not as we wish it should be. So we do need legislation of this kind.It seems that the right-wing Turnbull Government which is such an admirer of John Key is looking for a way to impress the Australian public and its deportation policy is one of those measures. The fact that it is a gross infringement of human rights seems to be no concern of theirs but it actually is a lot of concern to us because we have to accept back here in New Zealand what are essentially in many cases not really Kiwis who have committed crimes in Australia. It is actually an unreasonable imposition on New Zealand that our so-called Aussie mates are fobbing off some of their convicted crims on us and that is the truth of the matter. By contrast New Zealand does not deport people who have been here for over 10 years and that is what we have a right to expect should happen in Australia as well. Australia needs to reconsider its human rights actions and record in this way.New Zealand First does accept that this bill is needed. We regret that it is needed but we accept that it is needed. It is needed so that we will have a mechanism for dealing with the people who are already beginning to arrive back here in significant numbers. But we should not do it without protest. John Key says that he has raised it with Malcolm Turnbull with no obvious result. We should be making it clear that Australia’s law is wrong and should be changed. John Key has been acting more like a public relations man for the Australian Government than a Kiwi Prime Minister and that is the truth.There has been very little time to study the detail of the bill but I do appreciate the Minister of Justice providing advance copies of the draft bill to us so that we could have a good look at it because we know that the matter is urgent and we accept that this bill does need to be treated with urgency. There is a clear need to see that deportees are received here in an orderly way that looks after their need for reintegration and that allows New Zealand to impose conditions on their return to New Zealand so that the New Zealand public can be properly protected. In doing that we will be doing nothing much more than what happens to New Zealand prisoners who are released from prison. So I do not see that the intent of the bill is really much of a problem for us.I am interested in the definition as the Greens are I hear of what is a “returning offender”. The bill says that a returning offender is one who has been convicted of an offence that would be imprisonable in New Zealand for a term of 1 year or more—would be imprisonable for that period not convicted for that period. We know that a lot of legislation provides for maximum periods of imprisonment but we envisage that not all offending will be that serious and in many cases the actual term of imprisonment will be a lot less. So I think there may be a bit of a problem with the bill in this respect and that is one of the matters that will I am sure be the subject of a review when that happens within the next 2 years. So notwithstanding that problem New Zealand First will continue to support the bill because we do need a regime and this is better than nothing for the time being. But it is far from perfect and I look forward to the review so that we can deal with some of those issues.I also see that there are various provisions to identify people including DNA profiling and powers for the police and others to ensure that the necessary information is obtained. Some of those look to me to be a little Draconian and I wonder whether they should be necessary especially for some of the low-level offenders that we are going to be receiving back. So that is going to be another issue for review I feel within the next couple of years. The people who are returning can be required within 6 months to provide the information required. That seems to me to be a very long period and I wonder whether that is too long. If this is such an urgent problem and needs to be dealt with so effectively and so quickly then why should we be allowing a period of up to 6 months for that purpose? Again I think that is going to be a matter for review within the next 2 years. It is not something that will cause New Zealand First to vote against the bill at this stage but something that we will need to look at in the future.The Commissioner of Police will determine who is a returning prisoner and that is something I may be talking a little bit about in the second reading of this bill because again there are some issues there. There are also provisions for dealing with people who arrive after 6 months of release and that applies to people who were being supervised in some way before leaving for New Zealand or who were subject to the equivalent of our extended supervision orders or public protection orders. That is not inappropriate and I do not think that would be a matter for grave concern. It is a particularly important matter for public protection.In the end all of the fundamental provisions of the bill are acceptable to New Zealand First. We are not happy with the extent of some of them. I will be criticising them again later in the debate and I do hope they will be attended to at least when the bill is reviewed in the next 2 years. I want to commend the Minister for adding that provision to the bill because the next 2 years are a period within which we are going to learn rather a lot and the review then will be absolutely necessary. For the meantime however New Zealand First will support the bill.