Parker David: Returning Offenders (Management and Information) Bill — In Committee Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeParker David: Returning Offenders (Management and Information) Bill — In Committee Third Reading[Sitting date: 17 November 2015. Volume:710;Page:8109. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon DAVID PARKER (Labour): Can I thank Metiria Turei for those amendments and I am sure that the Labour Party would support something like that to bring forward the review. We still think it would be preferable to have a two-track process starting today which would have put a parallel bill to a select committee for consideration of submissions that could be called tomorrow by the select committee and be heard in the normal process and within a year we would have a fully worked-through parallel bill that fixed all the mistakes that no doubt there are in this bill—and there is no doubt that there are mistakes in this bill. That would take effect on the expiration of this bill which could then have a termination date of a year from today. That would be a better solution but the Government has rejected that. I think that that shows how abusive it is of parliamentary processes generally and how unconcerned it is to get the exact balance right between civil liberties but also how unconcerned it is to protect the members of the public properly in the interim period between now and that review which it has got currently set out there 2 years ahead.On that last point I want to return to an issue that I raised with the Minister of Justice last night which is that as far as I am aware there is nowhere in New Zealand lawa requirement for people who have got convictions overseas to disclose those to the New Zealand authorities. Government members are not saying I am wrong we have had no advice to the contrary from the Minister and it seems to be nonsensical. Someone can return to New Zealand with a serious criminal offence overseas and no New Zealand authority has got the right to get that information from them. It might get that information from Interpol sometimes. It might get it from a cooperating country like Australia sometimes. There are other countries in the world that are in no state because of their civil disorder to provide us with that information even if they wanted to. So no doubt there are instances in New Zealand where returning serious criminals do not have a duty to provide information on what those convictions overseas were.Let us take what happens under this bill. This bill applies only in respect of orders for returning prisoners if those people have been returned within 6 months of their release from custody—so we cannot find any protection in subpart 2 in Part 2 of the bill—and in respect of Part 1 the only thing that they are required to provide us with is identifying particulars and as I have said in earlier contributions those identifying particulars as defined in the Policing Act are biographical information. They go to identification of the person not their convictions. So there is no doubt in my mind that that classification of identifying particulars in this legislation does not extend to their prior convictions.I want to also point out another problem with this bill that I think is unintentional and again it points to why we should be having this two-track process. Clause 9 of the bill says that “The Police may as soon as is reasonably practicable request a returning offender to provide identifying particulars and may detain the offender under section 10 if the offender refuses.” Clause 10 then says that the right of detention applies for only 6 months after the offender’s return. Again it is clear that this requirement to effectively have a compulsion mechanism so that you can get those identifying particulars applies for only the first 6 months after someone’s return.What is the policy rationale for that? I do not understand why it is that you would not want to have particulars of people for whom maybe because of Australian incompetence or New Zealand authorities’ incompetence it does not happen for the first 6 months.All of the sudden there is no need to have the particulars of people who have committed serious offences but who were not picked up in the first 6 months. Indeed this actually shows a problem in this legislation in respect of what has already happened.I agree that you should not have retrospective legislation that places people at double jeopardy retrospectively but it is actually a different thing to say that prospectively information you should have collected previously but you have not collected because of the incompetence of the Government—that you should not actually have the right to collect that information in the future if that is necessary to protect New Zealanders. I think that it is proper that the New Zealand authorities get information on people who have had serious convictions overseas after they return to New Zealand even if you do not ask for it for the first 6 months. After this legislation passes we can do something in respect of the first 6 months but not thereafter.Another issue which actually cuts the other way is that we actually might be going too far in respect of some offences. I was thinking about situations that go the other way. If you are a person who is under 27 years old and you are a New Zealander you have got rights to live in the United Kingdom for up to 2 years and get a work permit. I think that is in general the rule. It might have been tightened a little but it is something like that. I know this to be a particularly relevant issue because it actually happened to a friend of mine. A friend of mine stayed over there for longer than the 2 years and was then at risk of prosecution. She actually departed from the UK but others do not and actually overstay in breach of the immigration laws in the UK. If they are convicted it is an imprisonable offence and it would be an imprisonable offence in New Zealand too the maximum sentence for which would be more than a year’s imprisonment I think.You would also be liable for deportation. Even if you were not deported you would be told that you were liable for deportation and you would find yourself coming back to New Zealand. You would actually be a returning offender within the definition of clause 7(a). We might want that but I have not heard any Government member or the Minister actually say that that sort of returning offender is going to be caught by this legislation. I think in theory they are and yet with regard to the person whom I have talked about earlier—the person who might have had a murder conviction or a paedophilia conviction in an overseas jurisdiction at some earlier period and who comes back to New Zealand—we have got no right to get the particulars of their prior offending even if they might pose a threat to the New Zealand public. That is another illustration of how this legislation might not be getting the balance right. It might be attaching to people to whom we as a Parliament might not think it should attach; it might not be attaching to people to whom it should attach in order to protect the public.That is another reason why I cannot see why the Government is being so stubborn about refusing to allow the parallel process where a second version of this bill goes to a select committee so that we can actually consider these issues. Members of Parliament on this side of the House have done their best to make these contributions upon a simple reading of the bill thinking what the implications might be. People who are more expert in areas of the law than we are—specialists or people from the Law Society with a special interest or victim impact groups—will have other issues with this bill that we have not thought of and we are not going to get the opportunity to improve this legislative regime as a consequence until we have a review.I suspect the Minister is going to come and say “Well look maybe the review period should be brought forward a little bit so it doesn’t coincide with an election.” and that is a good thing. I thank the Minister for that and we in the Labour Party would support that if the Minister were to do that.Finally—and I will just recap on one point for the benefit of the Minister of Justice who is now in the chair—I do not accept the circular definition point. One of the points the Minister made yesterday was there would be some circularity introduced because if you have the requirement to provide particulars but you do not know that they are an returning offender then you would not necessarily know to ask them and therefore it is circular. It is actually not circular; it is just that it would not always apply. Given that clause 9 in terms of the request for identifying particulars always applies—it does not expire after 6 months; the only thing that expires is the Government’s right to detain for non-compliance with the request to give identifying particulars—I think we are left with a gap in the law.It is a nonsense that someone who has returned from overseas—let us say someone is picked up on a suspected paedophilia charge outside a school. This could happen; it does happen in New Zealand. The police say “We don’t know about you. What have you been up to?” and that person says “Oh look I’ve just come back from overseas. I’ve been overseas for 10 years.” That person has got no duty to tell them whether in that 10-year period they were spending you know 10 years in prison in Pakistan or something for charges relating to children.That has got to be a nonsense and we can fix it in this legislation by requiring that a person who returns from overseas who is a New Zealander who has been convicted in an overseas jurisdiction of an offence that constitutes an imprisonable offence in New Zealand and who was liable for deportation—you do not have to be deported; you just have to be liable for deportation—has a duty to provide information to the police if requested as to what their conviction was overseas and what their penalty was. It seems to me a very sensible proposition from the Labour Party so I would hope that Parliament backs my amendment.