Perry Edwin: Prisoners' and Victims' Claims Bill — Instruction to Committee In Committee 
Perry Edwin: Prisoners' and Victims' Claims Bill — Instruction to Committee In Committee 
[Volume:626;Page:20935] 
EDWIN PERRY (NZ First) 
: 
 New Zealand First will be opposing the Prisoners’ and Victims’ Claims Bill. We want to rename this bill the “Screw the Screws Bill” and I am sure that most Kiwis throughout New Zealand would relate to that new title. It is what the bill is all about. It is about ways in which a prisoner can make a claim against a prison officer or the Department of Corrections and get compensation. 
This bill rings a bell; it sounds like those bills that have to have “regard for the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi”. This is just another gravy train for politically correct lawyers. I can see that sort of thing happening right down the line with this bill. No funds should be made available to criminals. They do the crime and they do the time. Most New Zealanders will relate to that principle very very easily. If one listened to Radio Pacific and the talkback shows when this compensation was mooted and out in the media one would know that the people of New Zealand went absolutely mad. Why should this Government be settling on this bill? 
This does not mean that prisoners should be ill-treated while in prison but neither does it mean that their human rights should suddenly become much more significant than the rights of victims who in most cases were murdered. I am really surprised at the Greens’ attitude towards this bill. Quite frankly this is the dead-end for the Greens because they are supporting this bill on the basis of human rights. But human rights were taken away from the victims. Prisoners are trying to get compensation and the Greens are supporting this bill from the aspect of prisoners’ human rights. Quite frankly I am disgusted that the Greens are now the doormats for Labour to get this bill through. 
Those rights are set out in the international United Nations Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. But what about the victims of those criminal heinous crimes? Several Mangaroa prisoners some years ago were paid compensation on the grounds that they were ill treated. But the interesting part about that whole claim was that there was no mention of Mr Hati Kaiwai the prison officer who was so badly beaten that his assailants stacked mattresses on top of him and left him for dead. What did he get? As a colleague from National has said he got nothing. That is what he got—zero for the beating and the scars he will bear for the rest of his life. 
There is also the case of Mr William Bell—and I am sorry to call him “Mr”; he is a scumbag—who was involved in the brutal murders at the Mount Wellington - Panmure RSA. He murdered one of the RSA members—someone who had fought for Bell’s right to live in this country and for the rights of all New Zealanders to be part of this community. Who met his end at the hands of a criminal on parole? Again in the paper recently we read that Mrs Couch is suffering the effects of being brutally beaten and shotgun whipped by that scumbag. She is having problems in trying to get help from the Accident Compensation Corporation. As Mr Brownlee said where is the help for the victim? Zero—again. 
I am sure that all New Zealanders listening to this debate tonight will be thinking: “What a lot of drivel from the Greens and what a disgusting bill from Labour.” I advise that Sam Te Hei who cold-bloodedly murdered Colleen Burrows in 1987 is now seeking compensation for a breach of human rights—an act that the Greens are supporting—and would get to keep the money. As we have heard tonight the money should not be paid out to the criminals but put into a fund and at the end of the day the victims should receive it not the criminals. Mrs Ida Hawkins mother of Colleen Burrows has said that Te Hei now wants human rights. As I mentioned earlier in my speech his rights were extinguished when he went to prison. Mrs Hawkins said that human rights are for human beings. Te Hei is a disgrace to Maoridom. He is not a human being.