Franks Stephen: Prisoners' and Victims' Claims Bill — Second Reading 
Franks Stephen: Prisoners' and Victims' Claims Bill — Second Reading 
[Volume:625;Page:20564] 
STEPHEN FRANKS (ACT) 
: 
 I rise for the ACT party on this second reading of the Prisoners’ and Victims’ Claims Bill. This is the reported-back version from the Justice and Electoral Committee of a bill that came into the House about 6 months too late after a grave embarrassment for the Government as people came to realise just what was happening. The bill came in after Christopher Taunoa got the equivalent of $500 tax-free a week for what a judge had decided was abuse of his human rights when in prison. Others received payment also. The $55000 that Taunoa received was awarded because he had been kept on something called the behaviour management regime which had been introduced into Paremoremo prison—after the authorities had just about lost control of that prison—for the worst criminals New Zealand had. It had been introduced to say essentially that there are sticks and carrots that apply even in prison—that the prisoners have not taken control of that prison. 
The judge heard claims from Taunoa that he had been treated cruelly had had his human rights abused and had suffered torture—because for example he had not been given a clean rag to wipe out his cell and the windows had been left open too long in winter when it was chilly and not long enough in summer when it was hot. He complained that lights had been left on and it had been hard for him to sleep. Some of those complaints the judge decided did not amount to torture but the judge decided that overall Mr Taunoa deserved compensation of $55000 or more than $500 a week because his human rights had been breached. 
One of the things about sitting on the Justice and Electoral Committee was that it was actually very hard not to be caught unmanned—not to be caught wiping away tears—when some of the victims came before us and asked in their own very eloquent way: “Why are we having the insult of even hearing this when these beasts have murdered and taken away forever any human rights of our relatives?”. It is hard even to remember some of those presentations because those people came to the committee absolutely incredulous that Parliament could even be troubling to think about doing this. They asked: “How can it be that the accident compensation scheme says we have no recourse while these beasts are complaining about things like having only a dirty rag to wipe out their cells?”. They could not believe that the committee members were solemnly listening to the Minister’s officials addressing the committee on this issue. 
I have to say the committee was doing a diligent job on all sides. I understand why Edwin Perry handed out plaudits to the committee members because I think the committee tried as hard as it could to overcome the ideological bent of a Government determined to push through a completely fraudulent bill. The committee tried to find ways around the advice and the advice was really simple in the end: it does not matter what the people of New Zealand want what the members of this House might want to do or what most of the members of the committee feel would be just—we cannot do it because there is no sovereignty left in this country. The august bodies in the United Nations which Minister Goff wants to pontificate in front of and be applauded by have said that it is not possible for New Zealand to abolish compensation to prisoners. We cannot do it they have said. 
Well I think that most of us probably wanted to say “Get stuffed!”. We certainly wanted to have a reasonable answer for Mr Tai Hobson who came before us and said: “Bell didn’t give my wife any conditions. Bell”—with 102 previous convictions mainly for violence—“didn’t give my wife any mercy. Why am I told that he is to be paid when the courts just tossed my case out before I could even start it?”. The court stated that he has no remedy and we could not give him an answer. But the answer that is coming from Prime Minister Helen Clark—who probably wants a career like the one Mary Robinson has at the United Nations when she has finished stuffing this country up—and from this Government is that it does not matter what New Zealanders want or feel. The international bureaucrats and the torturers the robbers and the tyrants who put people on to the United Nations Human Rights Committee have said that New Zealand cannot do it. 
I believe that United Future deserves all the embarrassment and squirming that it is experiencing because there is only one reason that the Government is getting this fraudulent bill through. It is that United Future has said it will vote for it. Yet the very true eloquent minority report of United Future in the commentary states: “Whilst the bill has not achieved its overall intention to prevent one more cent of taxpayer money from reaching the pocket of prison inmates United Future accepts that in the absence of a willingness to put aside spurious UN resolutions or a willingness to restrict all remedies to those of a non-cash basis this bill does the next best thing.” Then it does not tell us what the next best thing is. 
The bill does next to nothing. The bill is a piece of political flannel. The bill is being debated and rushed through now because the Minister thinks that New Zealanders are mug enough to forget during the 3 months within which the Government will have to call an election what this bill is doing. The Government wants this over now and next week because it cannot actually face there being any interest in it. We have no media present. There is not a single journalist covering this debate yet it was a major issue when the bill was introduced. In other words I think the Government is correctly calculating that its tactic will work. This bill is spent news. 
I think of Tai Hobson. I think of a woman who called me from Hawke’s Bay and said that she could not give evidence as her son was living overseas because he had had the cheek to give evidence against the people who had turned his head into a football. She named one of the defendants—who was one of the Te Hei family that Edwin Perry mentioned—who had turned her son’s head into a football put him out of work and left him in hospital for a very long time. Those people rule in that area of Hawke’s Bay. Her son could not afford to have his mother come here and do what she wanted to do which was to tell Parliament what she thought of Te Hei qualifying for compensation. 
It is not just Taunoa; there has been a string of them. We never received the details. The Hon Margaret Wilson did deals with those prisoners secretly and the Government has never revealed to Parliament exactly what those sums were. But the Government did confirm the totals that had been spent. In September 2000 we heard that $538000 had been paid out in secret payouts for so-called human rights abuses including payments to Raheke Te Hei Michael Ratima and John Gillies. The payouts were of between $40000 and $90000 each. 
They were made because this Government is not willing to take on the judges of this country either. The judges invented this financial compensation right for so-called human rights abuse. They made it up. They made it up after Parliament had decided not to include a right to compensation in the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. They made it up because they think there needs to be an effective remedy. If prison officers have abused their powers—and I do not accept that it was torture or that it was serious—what sort of remedy is it and what respect or regard does it create for justice to impose a payment against the Crown that is to go to completely undeserving recipients of a windfall when the real fault lies if it lies with anyone at all with a few prison officers who should be subject to disciplinary procedures? This Government has utterly lost control of its workforce. Its employment law means that it probably cannot sack those officers until they have tortured three times—if they ever tortured at all. 
So we have to face these victims and to apologise for a bill that is fraudulent in its intent—because the Government knows that it is unlikely to take a cent from any of the people who receive these windfall compensation payments—in favour of the Government being able to pretend that United Nations so-called human rights obligations are being met. ACT will vote against this bill and we will do it with a sense of disgust.