Nash Stuart: Prisoners’ and Victims’ Claims (Expiry and Application Dates) Amendment Bill — Second Reading In Committee Third Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Nash Stuart: Prisoners’ and Victims’ Claims (Expiry and Application Dates) Amendment Bill — Second Reading In Committee Third Reading 
[Sitting date: 22 June 2010. Volume:664;Page:12080. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
STUART NASH (Labour) 
: 
 I have one question for you Mr Chairperson Roy. The New Zealand Maori rugby game against England: where was that played? In Napier I think; the lucky city is in Hawke’s Bay. The Prisoners’ and Victims’ Claims (Expiry and Application Dates) Amendment Bill is a very interesting bill. Chester Borrows talked about DNA. I think that every now and then the Government has to take a DNA sample to check whether Chester is still alive. Well he may be at the moment but I can tell members that the word on the street in Whanganui is that Hamish McDouall is ahead in a poll that was taken recently. He is storming ahead in Whanganui. Here is a tip: if members have a spare $10 they should put $5 on the All Whites and $5 on Hamish McDouall. Hamish is safe odds in Whanganui. It used to be our seat and it will be our seat once again so I say “Go Hamish!”. 
This bill is about the victims of crime. Of course it contains provisions that were introduced in 2005 by a hard-working Labour Minister. It is hard to know which one it was because they were all very hard-working. As we all know after 9 years Labour had got through one hell of a lot of legislation. It changed society for the better without a question of a doubt for victims as well for other people. Chester Borrows stood up and said the Labour Opposition has not given one reason why we support this bill. Well I will give National one reason why we support this bill: because we support victims’ rights as well. Who would not? Of course we support victims’ rights. New Zealanders support victims’ rights because New Zealanders support justice against inequity. 
But I will give members a story about how this Government is eroding the rights of victims. There is a house in Napier called Serenity House. It is on the hill. Anyone knows Napier at all will know that the hill is a beautifully treed place. People would not know that this house was beside them if they lived beside it. It is a house where five women stay for a period of on average about 18 months. They are women who suffer from a severe lack of self-esteem and confidence. Eighty percent of those women are victims of sexual abuse. But that house is scared that its funding is to be cut. I ask members as I asked the Serenity House manager where those women would be if they were not in Serenity House. There are three places that they would be: firstly in the psychiatric ward of the mental health unit of Hawke’s Bay Hospital; secondly perhaps living on the streets and occasionally working on the streets; and thirdly dead from suicide. That is the stark reality when we take away the rights of victims and when we cut accident compensation funding. When I mentioned to the manager that funding for the counselling of the victims of sexual abuse was being removed from the accident compensation scheme she said she knew that but she was horrified. She could not believe that any Government could be so heartless as to do that. I know that the women on the Government side of the Chamber must agree with me. How could they not? 
Serenity House has been going for a while now and once the five women pass through their course—these are mothers and there is a registered nurse in there; a lot of them are educated women—they go out and become productive members of our community. That house does a fantastic job for those women and a fantastic job for our community but there is a possibility that its funding will be cut. I challenge the members over there and I challenge Nick Smith to organise a meeting with women’s groups—with the Women’s Refuge; with the women from Serenity House and from DOVE for example—to front up to these women and to tell them why he is cutting the funding for counselling. Why is Nick Smith doing that? Then in the same breath the Government says it stands up for victims’ rights. That is an oxymoron. I do not understand it the women who are affected do not understand it and New Zealanders do not understand it. 
Chester Borrows stood up and asked what Labour had done with regard to crime. Well I will tell him what we did: we reduced crime. That is what New Zealanders wanted to be done. We reduced crime. As Chester himself will know we sent the police out into the community and we set up community police stations. When I talk to the police officers of Napier they say they think that was a fantastic initiative because it allowed the police to communicate and integrate with their local communities and boy that has made a huge difference. That “us and them” mentality between the police and the community has all but disappeared in Napier. The police are now part of this community; they are accepted. The community goes to them if it has any problems and the police are proactive about going out to the community. It is a wonderful initiative and Labour set it up. 
We talk about being hard on crime—like David Garrett and his “three strikes” policy. That harks back to the 19th century when in England paedophiles were put in the same prison cells as the young children who had stolen loaves of bread. Is that what Mr Garrett wants this country to head back to? Mr Garrett is the voice in Parliament of the Sensible Sentencing Trust. Is that not an unusual name—the Sensible Sentencing Trust? We all want there to be sensible sentencing. Garth McVicar is from the Bay as well; sometimes we throw up interesting characters in the Bay. He is passionate but he gets it wrong and that is a shame. Unfortunately for him he ends up with people like David Garrett in the House trumpeting the “three strikes” legislation which evidence has proven does not work. In fact Mr Garrett himself stood up in this Chamber and said he acknowledged that it would not work but he thought we should still go ahead with it. National with its blind faith in the ACT Party said it would support that measure because it had said in its supply and confidence agreement that it would do so. Where is the ideology? Where is the evidence? That legislation will not help ordinary New Zealanders. It will not help the victims of crime; in fact more than likely it will create more victims. It is a travesty and it is not what sensible sentencing is all about. It is not about that philosophy; it is about how we deal with those people. But no we do not lock them up in cells now. 
I will tell members what England used to do. Before it sent prisoners away to the colonies it stuck them in decommissioned warships out on the Thames. Then they were sent across to Australia. Well we are not putting prisoners in decommissioned warships these days; we are putting them in decommissioned containers. That is not a far cry is it from what England used to do in the old days. I think that if Mr Garrett had his way he would actually stick prisoners in decommissioned warships. How does that help the victims of crime? It does not help them. 
I plead with the Government to think about whom it is harming when it takes away accident compensation funding for the victims of sexual abuse. I would love to take any member from the Government side of the Chamber to Serenity House to see the good work that that organisation and its staff do and to see the difference that they are making in our communities with damaged women 80 percent of whom are there because they are the victims of sexual abuse. I am a huge supporter of the victims of crime. I think anyone who doubts whether any MP on this side of the Chamber supports the victims of crime needs to have his or head read and does not understand what the Labour Party is about. We support this bill but we have serious reservations about the words that are coming from the Government benches. Thank you.