Chauvel Charles: Victims of Crime Reform Bill — First Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Chauvel Charles: Victims of Crime Reform Bill — First Reading 
[Sitting date: 04 October 2011. Volume:676;Page:21681. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
CHARLES CHAUVEL (Labour) 
: 
 New Zealand has some way to go before appropriately catching up with other jurisdictions in the way it deals with people who are caught up through no fault of their own in the criminal justice system. I instance Victoria which is a very comparable jurisdiction to ours in terms of wealth population and cultural background in many ways. I also instance the Victims of Crime Assistance Tribunal that operates in Victoria. 
I was fortunate in 2007 to get the opportunity as part of one of the select committee exchanges that this Parliament operates from time to time to go and observe the Victims of Crime Assistance Tribunal in action. It was an interesting trip I have to tell the House because the National members of the Justice and Electoral Committee—Chris Finlayson Chris Auchinvole and Nicky Wagner—decided in one of those endearing little stunts that parliamentarians decide to pull from time to time to boycott the trip protesting against travel on the taxpayer. 
Hon David Carter 
: He lives in the past this man. 
CHARLES CHAUVEL 
: Yes they were living in the past; Mr Carter is quite right. But the trip was interesting on another front and that is because we had the then Maori Party member Hone Harawira with us. But he decided to go up to the Northern Territory and have a look at the intervention going on there at the time. So in the end there was Lynne Pillay—who gave such an excellent valedictory speech earlier on—as chair of the committee; there was I think Ann Hartley the other Labour member; and there was Nandor Tanczos and me. 
We met with the deputy chair of the Victims of Crime Assistance Tribunal we met with a number of lawyers who had interaction with that tribunal we met with counsellors who were attached to the tribunal and we learnt about the very comprehensive regime that Victoria has put in place to try to help people who have become the victims of crime. 
Two aspects of the regime in Victoria really struck me. First of all victims of crime have an automatic entitlement to compensation and that compensation is designed to try to make them whole following the crime they have suffered. For example if there has been a burglary then one of the powers the tribunal has is to order payment for the replacement of the locks on the home or the broken windows that the homeowner or tenant has suffered as a result of the burglary. It is about making the victim whole again after having suffered what they have suffered. 
To an extent we have some of this system reflected already in New Zealand in the accident compensation regime but it is not a comprehensive system directed at repairing victims. It is by-chance compensation if people have an ACC entitlement by reason of having suffered personal injury by accident. 
The other thing that really struck me about the Victorian regime was the fact that the tribunal held hearings. The victim got a chance to go along to a safe judicial process and tell their story—to tell the presiding magistrate as it is in Victoria what it was like to go through the experience they went through. The magistrate could order counselling and the magistrate could order compensation and that was indeed the default position under the Victims of Crime Assistance Tribunal system. It is a therapeutic approach to the experience that victims have in the system. 
This legislation would replace or at least in many ways update and amend the Victims’ Rights Act 2002—a very good piece of legislation that the last Labour Government enacted through this Parliament. That legislation replaced the Victims of Offences Act 1987 which was really the first time—again under a Labour Government—that this Parliament comprehensively addressed the rights the needs and the interests of people who have been as I said earlier caught up through no fault of their own in the criminal justice system. 
I have reservations about whether this updating goes far enough. I wonder whether we will still be behind jurisdictions like Victoria once we have gone through this exercise and I have some other reservations frankly about the way in which we are approaching the debate around victims. Again I refer back to the words that we heard from Lynne Pillay earlier. She was a well-respected chair of the Justice and Electoral Committee for 3 years. She presided over the inquiry into victims’ rights and the officials’ recommendations from that inquiry led to the legislation that we are considering now. I do recall one thing she said which was that a bipartisan approach is needed on the issue of the interests of victims. 
I also recall the warning we received from the Chief Justice a year or two ago on the increasingly shrill rhetoric about trying to jam victims into our criminal justice system. Our system does not have a natural place for the victim. The old adversarial system consists of the Crown and the defendant and to try to graft a third player into the system without very very careful thought is to risk doing things to the system by way of unintended consequences that I do not think anybody in this House would find particularly desirable. 
Also I do not think there is any merit in attaching a consideration of the rights of victims to rhetoric around vindictiveness in our criminal justice system. No end of the political spectrum or the debate on criminal justice has a monopoly on caring about the rights and interests of victims and if we allow that sort of rhetoric to invade the debate then frankly I do not think we are doing victims any great service. 
I also think it is a shame that this legislation which would update an Act that is now 9 years old is coming to the House in only the last week of this Parliament. For all the rhetoric about victims this legislation can go nowhere until February at the earliest so I think it is appropriate to reflect again on the rhetoric around victims’ interests and on whether it is bona fide action or whether it is simply words. 
This legislation will come back to the next Parliament and Labour will evaluate it carefully either in Opposition or in Government. We will make sure that as we seek as a Parliament to advance the victims’ agenda we will do it in a way that is balanced and respectful of the way other parts of the system work.