Clendon David: Public Safety (Public Protection Orders) Bill Parole (Extended Supervision Orders) Amendment Bill — Second ReadingsText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeClendon David: Public Safety (Public Protection Orders) Bill Parole (Extended Supervision Orders) Amendment Bill — Second Readings[Sitting date: 26 November 2014. Volume:702;Page:867. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]DAVID CLENDON (Green):These two bills we are debating today are serious bills. They deal with serious issues of community safety of reducing crime of reducing the potential for victimisation and revictimisation of people and I am pleased to see that they are being debated in this serious manner appropriate to their gravity.The previous speaker Jono Naylor in his brief contribution did touch on one or two matters. We must seek to protect our communities and put in place appropriate controls: legislation that does ensure—or at least to the greatest extent ensure—public safety while also acknowledging that we are a country that commits itself to maintaining human rights and respects civil rights. It would be unfortunate if we revert to the very dated language of “soft on crime” versus “hard on crime”. Let us adopt the notion of being smarter about crime and doing our very best collectively to get the outcomes and the best solutions we can to assure a level of community safety.We understand and support the notion of these two bills being addressed as cognate bills to be debated together. They are so closely interwoven that it would be difficult to do otherwise. They effectively establish two new regimes: the Parole (Extended Supervision Orders) Amendment Bill obviously extends an existing regime; the Public Safety (Public Protection Orders) Bill creates a new regime. We are in a position in the Greens where we perhaps not unusually support one of these bills the Parole (Extended Supervision Orders) Amendment Bill. We are happy to give our support to that bill but we cannot support the Public Safety (Public Protection Orders) Bill. For us that latter bill simply goes a step too far. We believe that what it seeks to achieve can be achieved by other less punitive and less onerous means. That is in no way to not acknowledge or recognise the seriousness of the offending and the difficulty of the offenders who will be potentially captured by that legislation.As I said the Parole (Extended Supervision Orders) Amendment Bill does effectively allow for the possibility of extending the existing supervisory order regime. There are undoubtedly New Zealand Bill of Rights Act issues. The bill has been deemed by the Attorney-General to contravene the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act and that is something that often for the Greens would be a deal-breaker. We take some comfort in this case though from the fact that firstly the courts will be intimately involved in making judgments about the imposition of these orders that there will be mandatory review by the courts and indeed by the High Court and that the Parole Board will also be obliged to review on a 2-yearly cycle at least every 2 years any of the so-called high-impact conditions imposed on a person subject to these orders—high impact being for example anybody who is obliged to remain at one address for up to 70 hours a week which is effectively a curfew and indeed clearly does put considerable constraints on an individual’s freedom. It is appropriate that when we are imposing these high-impact conditions they are regularly reviewed and measured in the context of that person’s behaviour and the possibility of their being able to earn the trust of the community within which they will be living.I think that what influenced our decision even more on this legislation was both personal interaction with people who are already subject to supervision orders and who with an admirable level of self-awareness recognise that if they had no further supervision on them they would constitute a danger to the community and indeed to themselves. I have spoken as have others to individuals who are coming to the end of a 10-year supervision order and they understand very well that they are not yet sufficiently trustworthy. If they were left to their own devices—if there was no mechanism in place to extend their supervision—they understand very well that there is a high likelihood that they would reoffend clearly would create victims and that ultimately would see those people go back into prison. So the extension of the supervision orders we see as a middle road in a sense. It does allow for very high-level supervision and monitoring of these people who have not yet earned the trust of their communities and for very good reason but it does not go that step into suggesting either way that they should be completely freed or put back into prison.There was some debate at the Law and Order Committee about whether these ought to be civil orders. Frankly we saw that as a debate about semantics. In contrast with the public protection orders whether they are civil or criminal in nature we really need to look at both the effect on the person subject to these orders and the likelihood of ensuring community safety. Points are made in the report back on the bill about the importance of including some criteria for what constitutes behavioural characteristics particularly of the violent offenders because of course this legislation expands the scope from just child sex offenders through to those who have offended sexually against adults and to very high-level violent offenders. We think it is important that there are some criteria in that some determination of what actually constitutes that level of behavioural characteristic that would make somebody eligible or liable to this quite dramatic if you like legislation. So in short we are supporting the Parole (Extended Supervision Orders) Amendment Bill because we do see that there is an existing need and as I say we have been persuaded to a large extend by actual interaction with the people who we know by their own admission could not be safely left in the community unmonitored.The Public Safety (Protection Orders) Bill we see as going a step too far. We think that to a large extent the conditions that might have led us to think it was necessary no longer apply. The fact is that judges now do have access to preventive detention for example and at a time when some of the people who might be subject to public protections orders were given their determinate sentences preventive detention was not available. It is also true of course that some offenders are so young that they are not able to be subject to preventive detention but nevertheless we believe that there are sufficient mechanisms in place including of course this new legislation—the extension supervision orders legislation—which makes it unnecessary to go down this path of imposing these public protection orders.The Law Society in its quite comprehensive submission on this legislation outlined some of the issues and it determined that in its view this legislation does create an overly punitive regime for people who have been sentenced. They have been to court a judge has imposed a sentence and in most instances these people will have served their full sentences or have been paroled or some other mechanism will have been put in place. The Law Society called for the bill to be either withdrawn or significantly modified. We acknowledge there have been some changes made to the legislation but they are really not sufficient enough for us to give it our support. This is undoubtedly a double jeopardy situation—punishment that is ongoing almost without end in a sense. There is the possibility for these public protection orders to be in place almost indefinitely and we think that that is inappropriate given that we do have other options available to us options that include a range of sentencing and parole options for serious sexual and violent offenders.I will quickly in my last couple of moments just make a comment about the context in which these debates are held. It is unfortunate—and I say this with no righteousness; as a politician I take responsibility as well—that very often these serious criminal bills become effectively political footballs and as I mentioned we have this whole “hard on crime” and “soft on crime” nonsense. I think that we need to collectively endeavour to depoliticise some of these debates—to endeavour collectively to simply get the best outcome. I think we also need to address our friends in the media and endeavour to challenge the sensationalism that often surrounds the reporting of serious offending. The latest instance is this unfortunate woman dubbed the “Black Widow” who committed a serious crime—she murdered a person—but the sensationalism around the reporting of that case the endless gratuitous media reporting has now placed that woman in danger while she is serving her sentence. Finland is a good case study of where there was a political agreement not to politicise serious criminal legislation and for the media not to sensationalise the reporting of crime and offending and I think we could take a lesson from that. If we could get a similar level of agreement in New Zealand I think we would find that the passage of this legislation would be much more refined and much more successful. Thank you.