Collins Judith: Corrections Bill — Instruction to Committee In Committee Procedure 
Collins Judith: Corrections Bill — Instruction to Committee In Committee Procedure 
[Volume:617;Page:12988] 
JUDITH COLLINS (National—Clevedon) 
: 
 David Parker who spoke after me in my previous speech said that no sensible Government could possibly expect anyone to believe that the definition of “family group” could include gangs and he quoted from the bill. I have just had sent to me a copy of the Families Commission Act which was passed by the House last year. The definition of “family group” in that legislation as introduced was exactly the same as that given in this Corrections Bill and it had to be changed because an awful lot of very sensible people realised that the words “a significant psychological attachment” could include gangs. The wording was changed to what appears in section 10(1) of the Act: “In this section ‘family’ includes a group of people related by marriage blood or adoption an extended family 2 or more persons living together as a family and a whanau or other culturally recognised family group. Subsection (3) goes on to state that “persons are not members of a family for the purposes of this section solely because they have as their common objective or 1 of their common objectives the achievement of some outcome of a community domestic professional recreational social vocational or other nature (for example the commission of offences against any enactment …”. In other words gangs and all other groups that could be called groups of a social nature were excluded. So the House in its wisdom amended the Families Commission legislation to take out the gang connection. However the Corrections Bill does not do that. 
I know that the Minister does not really believe in this bill. I can tell that because every time he stands up to defend it he comes out with lines such as: “Well this is Labour Party policy.” and “Nobody should do this other than the Government.” I just know that he does not believe in it. I would like to know whether he would consider changing the bill at this stage to reflect the changes brought about by the House in the Families Commission legislation. Quite clearly it is wrong when different definitions for the same things and for the same sorts of purposes are contrary. For a start it makes for very bad case law. Secondly it makes far better sense. It is just silly nonsense from Mr Parker to say that nobody could ever think that “family group” could include gang members. Of course it could. That is why he had to stop quoting during his earlier presentation. 
The Committee stage is an opportunity for the Government to try to fix some of this. Unfortunately the Minister has not looked further at the legislation. It has been floating around for a long time and one of the problems is that it has not had the benefit of the changes made to the Families Commission legislation. I would like the Minister to look at the bill in this regard. We would certainly facilitate whatever change needs to be made to bring it into line with the Families Commission Act. At the end of the day we know that the Government has the numbers on this no matter how few they might be; but we do want the law to be as good as possible given the appalling situation this legislation will render. 
I would like to take up the issue of the purpose of this bill. The purpose of prison should be first and foremost to punish. Second it should keep people out of society locked up in prison so they cannot offend against society and victims. Rehabilitation will not work unless a person wants to be rehabilitated. That is the truth first and foremost. One cannot take any adult and say: “I’m now going to rehabilitate you and take you out of the criminal environment.” That will not happen until the person is ready to be rehabilitated. When I looked at the purpose of the legislation I asked myself what it says about the people who signed up for tougher sentencing It says to the 92 percent of people in this country who signed a referendum for tougher sentencing that they are not important. As we have said and we all know rehabilitation does not work.