Henare Peeni: Returning Offenders (Management and Information) Bill — First Reading Second Reading In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeHenare Peeni: Returning Offenders (Management and Information) Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee[Sitting date: 17 November 2015. Volume:710;Page:8065. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]PEENI HENARE (Labour—Tāmaki Makaurau):Tēnā koe Mr Assistant Speaker. Thank you very much for this opportunity. I rise for the second reading of this particular bill. I want to echo many of the sentiments of concern raised by my colleagues in particular on this side of the House. But before I do that I do want to just point out a comment made by the member Mr Naylor during the first reading around being convicted before being imprisoned. Recently on 5 November I remember Parihaka and Te Whiti o Rongomai and Tohu Kākahi who were imprisoned without trial or conviction.Anyway I digress—and now to the points of this particular bill. We do agree that it is necessary for a particular regime or a system to be put in place. Admittedly we acknowledge that this is somewhat of a knee-jerk reaction and if there is one saying I am sick and tired of hearing in this House and even repeating in this House it is: “Well I guess this is better than nothing.” It seems to be a theme that is running across a lot of the policy agenda and the legislation agenda of this Government and here is another case. Members on this side of the House have expressed concern around the democratic process that most bills go through and around just how fast this particular bill has been rushed in.The member opposite Jacqui Dean has mentioned that a robust conversation was held in particular by many of the Government departments and those Government departments we know are the Department of Corrections and the Police. But I do want to just echo and support the point made by the Green members about some of the other organisations in our communities who play a vital role in prisoner rehabilitation as it currently stands in New Zealand. I am sure they have a lot to contribute and a lot to comment on in terms of this particular legislation however they have been denied that particular opportunity.Also just on the comment about the consultation or the discussion that was had by Government agencies I see too that in clause 15(e) in Part 2 it talks about how the Department of Corrections can make applications to the “appropriate court” and in the bill it describes it as the District Court. The Justice and Electoral Committee members of which are in this House will know about some of the capacity issues that have hit the courts in recent times in particular down south and that some of them have been closed. I just question the actual capacity of Government departments and Government agencies to deal with this particular bill.I briefly mentioned earlier rehabilitation and the importance of it. The definition to my mind of rehabilitation is a planned intervention that attempts to change or alter whatever aspects that caused the prisoner’s criminal activities—things such as interpersonal relationships behaviour addictions and addressing those issues. This is in the hope that the likelihood of recidivism is decreased.We are debating in particular two of the streams or capacities if you like of this particular regime and one of them is around a returning prisoner and the other one is talking about other offenders. We have some concerns around that and around the need for more rehabilitation services.I do want to support the notion put forward by my colleague Mr Kelvin Davis around the support from the Māori rehabilitation angle in which I think the marae can play an important part. I want to mention Waatea Marae in Tāmaki-makau-rau which as far as I know is certainly one of those points that can assist with this type of legislation and the return of our citizens back to New Zealand. Kia ora.