Tirikatene Rino: Parole (Extended Supervision Orders) Amendment Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeTirikatene Rino: Parole (Extended Supervision Orders) Amendment Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 02 December 2014. Volume:702;Page:1023. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]RINO TIRIKATENE (Labour—Te Tai Tonga):Tēnā koe Mr Chair. I am pleased to make a contribution at the Committee stage on this bill. I have been listening very closely to the contributions on both bills. Although I am not a member of the Law and Order Committee and I have not really had firsthand experience with this bill or indeed with the aspects of the criminal justice system that this bill regulates I do hark back to my criminal justice system course days back at Victoria University. Warren Young was his name. The fundamental rules around the sentencing were that the aims of sentencing were to punish and deter the offender general deterrence rehabilitation reformation reparation and protection. All of those different considerations come into play when a sentencing decision is made. But in this case we are dealing with a very very small group of very very bad people. There is the saying that the punishment should fit the crime. Well here we are imposing restrictions on the offenders when no crime has actually been committed but the risk that these individuals pose and the impact and the harm that they can cause from their offending is so great that there needs to be some extended supervision imposed on these individuals.I support the intent of this legislation because as my colleague Mr Davis has mentioned sexual and violent offences are prevalent in our society. It is very regrettable and it is something that we as a Parliament and as a nation need to stamp out. Taking measures such as this legislation is very important. We are dealing with only a very small percentage of extreme offenders. I liken them to the most grotesque movie character you can think of and there are probably numerous movies that we have sat through and you know shivered over while watching them. These people are out there. Unfortunately they have committed crimes they have served their time but rehabilitation has obviously not worked for them. They are troubled individuals they are sick people and therefore they have to come under more stringent supervision when they do get to the end of their incarceration. So this is a welcome piece of legislation. Although I do note the fact that it is inconsistent with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act and it is also—The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): I am sorry to interrupt the honourable member. The time has come for me to leave the Chair for the dinner break.Sitting suspended from 6 p.m. to 7.30 p.m.RINO TIRIKATENE: Just prior to the dinner break I was explaining how the report of the Attorney-General—clearly in the Hon Christopher Finlayson’s opinion this piece of legislation is inconsistent with provisions of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act so that is serious obviously. We do not want to be putting through legislation that contravenes or is at odds with the rights of everyone under the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act but that has to be balanced I guess against the subject matter and the nature of this legislation. At the start of my speech I was talking about the different aims of sentencing. Clearly this piece of legislation is very much on the side of protection and on the side of public safety. Those considerations are paramount and they do supersede the rights of the individual. But it is not to say that the extended supervision under this legislation is going to be handed out willy-nilly because as we look through the provisions of Part 1 the tests that the court has to apply to determine the high-risk nature and the seriousness I guess of granting these extended supervisions are actually very very hard mandatory tests. There are about four or five mandatory tests that the court has to basically convince itself of before it will grant this extended supervision.What I do want to move on to now is that it is not only the Attorney-General who expressed concerns around the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act but there was a working group of the United Nations here earlier this year and it had a look through our criminal justice system. The bills that we have been considering today were one area where it did express concerns. So I think it is right that we do take heed of a body of the United Nations that has considerable weight. Ultimately some of the obligations that we enact through legislation derive from international law. Some of them derive from our obligations there. So again I think the work of this working group in a way is consistent because although they did express concerns they said that these provisions are justified if there are compelling reasons and regular periodic reviews. As I have mentioned there are stringent tests that have to be applied to justify the reasons for the granting of the extended supervision and also there are periodic reviews that are built in.Just to conclude my contribution I wanted to touch base on the contributions of a whanaunga of mine. He is very much an outspoken person in the criminal justice area. It is none other than Kim Workman who has been around for many years. His thinktank group Rethinking Crime and Punishment has also expressed concerns around—I guess it is more to do with the application of the operational side of granting the extended supervision. I can actually see his point because in some ways there are a lot of operational decisions that are made but we also want to ensure that with whatever conditions or stringent restraints are imposed upon offenders there is also an element of I guess rehabilitation. That is why the use of voluntary groups that specialise in these areas which he notes through circles of support and accountability—those sorts of programmes are very beneficial. So it is not about just imposing stringent rigid rules on the offender; it is also about ensuring that they do get proper support so that they hopefully do turn the corner and will be able to go back into society fully.Lastly—my very last point—I do want to go back to the working group of the United Nations on this bill because although it might be not directly relevant to this part in the bill I think in the overall context it is very important and that is the overrepresentation of Māori in the criminal justice system. Māori make up more than 50 percent of the total prison population even though we are only 15 percent of the population. In the case of Māori women they account for more than 65 percent of the prison population. So the reality is that offenders who fall within the ambit of this legislation will be Māori. The statistics are there and plain to see as sad as it is. Therefore I think I would encourage the Government to take heed of the working group’s recommendations around looking at the inconsistencies and systemic bias against Māori at all the different levels in the criminal justice system. Although I think this piece of legislation is a necessary piece of legislation that we are enacting we must not forget the overall context where Māori are very overrepresented in our prison population. I think we definitely need to work to make sure that we can reduce those numbers significantly.