Goff Phil: Prisoners’ and Victims’ Claims (Continuation and Reform) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Goff Phil: Prisoners’ and Victims’ Claims (Continuation and Reform) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Sitting date: 11 December 2012. Volume:686;Page:7372. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Hon PHIL GOFF (Labour—Mt Roskill) 
: 
 It is with some regret that I rise to oppose this bill the Prisoners’ and Victims’ Claims (Continuation and Reform) Amendment Bill. It is not because I do not believe that we should have victim-centred legislation—I believe that we should—but because I believe that this legislation is a thoroughly inadequate way of ensuring that offenders genuinely address the wrongs that they have done to their victims. 
I say that from the perspective of the Minister of Justice who put in place the original piece of legislation the Prisoners’ and Victims’ Claims Act 2005. I did that at a time when we were dealing with the residue of a Department of Corrections that had gone beyond the law and had breached the responsibilities that it had for the proper care of prisoners. Prisoners are there. They are locked up. They are locked up because they have committed terrible crimes. They are there because they deserve to be there but in our society we operate a system whereby the agencies of State are not exempt from the law; they have to operate under it. When they breach the law they should be called to heel on that. But I was faced with a situation arising out of what the Department of Corrections put in place called the behaviour modification regime. That regime was found—it was started under National and continued under Labour—to be in breach of international requirements on us. The fear that I had was that there were some lawyers who were keen on goldmining this case to make a lot of money for themselves and to give a bit of it to the inmates. 
Charles Chauvel 
: Outrageous. 
Hon PHIL GOFF 
: It is outrageous Mr Chauvel. I am sure you recognise that most lawyers would not sink to such depths but unfortunately it happens. 
What worried me was when I looked at the individual cases of the inmates who were covered by the  
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 case. They had done horrendous things to their victims and not one of them had paid a penny in reparation or restitution to the victims. The reasons for that were pretty straightforward: they came from dysfunctional backgrounds they had no savings and they had no income because they were going to be locked up for a long time. The victims got nothing and suddenly the offenders because of the Department of Corrections breaching its responsibilities were going to get a large handout. I thought that that was fundamentally wrong. I just thought it does not make sense. Yes the State has been wrong in its actions but why should these guys get the money and their own victims not get a cent in compensation? It seemed wrong to me and I brought this legislation in. 
I have got to say to the members opposite that the National Party in Opposition opposed it and made some outrageous statements that we should ignore all United Nations conventions about the treatment of prisoners. It is singing a different song in Government and that is probably a good thing. 
What I wanted to see was what I have always believed in: a system of restorative justice. Restorative justice is probably the best form of justice because it requires when somebody harms another person that there is a responsibility on the offender to put things to right for the victim to the extent that they are able to. There are a lot of different ways in which you can put things right. Sometimes it is by showing genuine remorse and apologising and asking for forgiveness. That can be shallow and it can mean nothing or it can be genuine. When it is genuine it has a real impact on the victim. The Samoan culture for example has a practice called ifoga where the offender has to go and cover himself with a fine mat and sit in front of the victim’s house until the victim is prepared to forgive him. We might be disparaging about those things but that produces a real form of natural justice. 
The other way you can do it is by restitution and reparation. Money does not solve everything but if a victim is suffering financial consequences from what the offender has done to them getting restitution actually does make a difference. It is a concrete form of payment from the offender to the victim and that should happen. Of course it does not happen for the reasons that I talked about before. 
I was not sure how this new regime was going to work. I therefore put some sunset clauses into it. I wanted to see how the thing would work. If it was effective then you might continue it. If it needed improving because it did not come up to the standards that we wanted we could make those changes or we might decide simply that after the  
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 case this was not a frequent enough event to actually have special legislation to cover it. The idea was that there would be a proper review of the legislation. Well sadly National after 2008 in Government did not do that review. We were caught in the situation last year where the legislation was going to expire and there was nothing in place that would improve the situation for the victim. So the Labour Party in Opposition did the responsible thing and said to the Minister: “We will work with you. We will extend this legislation for a year until we do that review. We will work together for the good of the victims in this country and we will try to find a better way of doing it.” Maybe Charles Chauvel and I were naive but we actually accepted the Minister at her word. 
I have got to say to this House that the Minister breached her undertaking and her promise. There was no consultation. There was no review that I can actually see—any meaningful review that even took place. So we wasted the time last year in extending the legislation. There is still no review no consultation and no attempt to reach across the House and say: “Let’s work together and get something that really does work properly for victims.” I think that that is a disgrace and I think on that basis it is impossible to support this piece of legislation. 
But I want to still do my best to be constructive for the Minister and say that this is still an opportunity to do the right thing for victims across the board. I am not interested only in helping that tiny number of victims who are in a situation where their offender gets a payment from the State because the State has breached its obligations. That covers a tiny number of people. Every day I read about and I talk to people about a situation where the victims are left penniless and the offender does nothing for them. 
One of the worst examples of that is in the case of white-collar offenders. White-collar offenders come from the top levels of society often. They are the accountants and the lawyers and the financiers. They live pretty well. But they get greedy and they get reckless or both and they rip people off. I have got people in my electorate who have lost their life-savings to white-collar offenders. You know to give credit to the courts there have been some reasonably tough sentences brought down but in the end those offenders will do a couple of years in prison and they will come out. We have seen it happen in the past. They will come out and because they have got the education and the contacts and the backing they will make a lot of money again. Everything will be sweet for them but my victims are living out the last days of their lives with their savings destroyed by these crooks who ripped them off. Those crooks go back into society and they never have to pay the money back. 
What makes it even worse—what makes it even worse—is that they are protected by trust laws. They go into prison they make no payment in reparation or too little payment but they have their money protected and/or hidden in family trusts. So they come out of prison and they have got the money there because it has been protected and they have got the skills the education and the contacts to make a lot more money and the victim is locked out on the outside. I say to this Government that that is what it should be looking at. It should be looking at a much wider scheme that ensures that those who have committed offences against society and against their victims are required to set things right for their victims. 
This bill does nothing of that sort. This bill is a cop-out. It is second rate. It is a broken promise by the Minister who did not honour her undertaking to consult with the Opposition on this. She has sat on her hands and done nothing. She brought this legislation which does practically nothing back into the House. We hear the fine-sounding speeches from members of the Government talking about victims’ rights but with a piece of legislation that hardly touches on victims’ rights or setting things right for the victims of our society when the offenders should be made to do that. 
I say to the Government that this legislation is not good enough. We are opposing it because it does not do what it should be doing for the victims. I ask the Government finally to honour the promise that it made across the House and bring in proper legislation that would do the right thing for victims.