Goff Phil: Returning Offenders (Management and Information) Bill — First Reading Second Reading In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeGoff Phil: Returning Offenders (Management and Information) Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee[Sitting date: 17 November 2015. Volume:710;Page:8086. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon PHIL GOFF (Labour—Mt Roskill): I want to start off by asking the Minister of Justice again to clarify when she first knew that there was a problem and started working on it. She said in answer to a question from Jacinda Ardern in the House this afternoon and again when she took the call that nothing was being considered until February of this year. I have on my computer screen here Stuff news dated 25 January 2015 and the former Minister—this Minister’s predecessor; somebody called Judith Collins—said that this was an issue that the Government had been aware of and was intending to make changes on and it was looking at a monitoring system in order to protect the community. Is it not the truth Minister that the Government has been aware of this for years? In the last year the Government was aware that there was five times the number of deported people coming back to New Zealand. That is new—the quantum is new but the issue is rather older than that.Again I ask the Minister what there is in this bill that to achieve the purpose set out in clause 1 could not have seen this bill introduced years ago if not months ago. One of the problems I have—and it is a genuine problem—is that we know that the purpose of this bill is to try to ensure the safety of the community but how do we know the bill will achieve that purpose? You know Mr Chairman that what would normally happen—The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Oh.Hon PHIL GOFF: Everybody in the Committee knows Mr Chairman that what would normally happen is that this bill would go to a select committee and we would hear from people with specialist knowledge in this area. We would hear from the experts. We would hear from the people who have been dealing with offenders with these sorts of criminal records in the past and we could have subjected this bill to particular scrutiny—if only it had been introduced months ago or years ago when the Government knew that this problem was pending. So I want to know why it is that we are rushing this bill through the House without public input without expert input and without proper consideration so that we would know we could achieve the purpose of it. Why has the Minister left this to the thirteenth hour?I want to come back to the regulatory impact statement because this gets to the heart of the purpose that clause 3 talks about. It says: “Returning offenders pose a risk to public safety …”. It goes back to 2013 which again raises questions about how long this Minister has been aware of it. It says that since 2013 70 percent of returning offenders have been convicted of serious offences—30 percent of assaults; 20 percent of armed robbery or burglary; 15 percent of rape or sexual assault; 5 percent of murder and manslaughter. Then the regulatory impact statement goes on to say that over a third—35 percent actually—of these returning offenders had reoffended within 12 months and 48 percent or nearly half had reoffended within 2 years. So here we have the regulatory impact statement setting out that the purpose of this bill is to achieve safety. There is a real risk to safety. Some of these people have offended seriously. Nearly half of them will reoffend again within 2 years and yet the Government sat on its chuff and did nothing.I think the Committee is owed an explanation of why the Government did not act. Why are we debating this after 157 new offenders have come here since May? I want to know from the Minister what the offences are that those 157 have committed. Are they serious offenders? Are they likely to be recidivist offenders? What level of risk do they pose to the community? What has this Minister and this Prime Minister done to protect New Zealand? This Prime Minister got up on his hind legs and said that the Opposition was doing nothing to protect us against rapists and murderers. Actually the Opposition does not have power. The Government has power and for 12 months this Government this Prime Minister and that Minister have done precisely nothing.