Moroney Sue: Public Safety (Public Protection Orders) Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeMoroney Sue: Public Safety (Public Protection Orders) Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 18 September 2013. Volume:693;Page:13484. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]SUE MORONEY (Labour): Tomorrow is Women’s Suffrage Day. The reason I put that on the record at the beginning of my contribution to the debate on this particular bill the Public Safety (Public Protection Orders) Bill is that all too often the public whom we will be protecting with this bill will be the women of New Zealand sadly in far too many instances. That is because the public protection orders are designed to be used for the worst sexual and violent offences and the offenders who commit those and—not always but mainly—we do find that those offenders are men and that their victims are women.So it is important that on the eve of Women’s Suffrage Day we reflect on how much more we still need to do in this area. In my view and in the view of my Labour colleagues we cannot say that we have made fantastic progress on women’s issues until women can feel safe in their communities can feel safe in their homes—can feel safe in their communities. Until that very basic fundamental human right is afforded to every New Zealand citizen including women then we really cannot pretend that we have made the sort of progress that we need to make.I would much rather be standing here speaking on a bill that actually stops these offences from taking place in the first place. Sadly by the time we are talking about these public protection orders far too many women children and others who are vulnerable in our society will have already been hurt by the offenders to whom we are applying the public protection orders. It does actually worry me that we spend a lot oftime under the term of this Government debating ambulance at the bottom of the cliff approaches to addressing violence and sexual violence in our community.I cannot remember the last time I was on my feet debating a bill put forward by this Government that was actually designed for and had the purpose of getting in front of all of that and actually putting in some legislative and policy measures that would actually stop the hurt from happening in the first place. So that is my wish on the eve of Women’s Suffrage Day—that this Parliament and this Government would focus more on stopping the hurt from happening in the first place than on spending the many many hours that we do spend debating the ambulance at the bottom of the cliff that we are going to put in place to actually keep punishing people who have already hurt far too many people in our society.So I guess that that is really the context in which I debate this bill. Labour is however supporting this bill going to the Justice and Electoral Committee. This is the first reading and Labour members want to have the opportunity to engage—as we have not been able to so far—in the design of a bill like this which is aiming I think at between five and 12 of the most serious offenders in this regard.It is of concern to me that the Government went out and campaigned on this bill during the election as it is wont to do. It wants to sound like it is tough on crime; that makes it feel better somehow. I would rather that we actually stopped the crime from happening in the first place but this Government is focused on dealing with the aftermath and the effects of crimes after they have happened. That is really where it comes from on this.But since it campaigned in the 2011 election to take this very measure one of those offenders whom this bill is actually aimed at has finished his jail term and this measure will not apply to him. I am referring to Stewart Murray Wilson. This measure was not available for that case because this Government has taken its sweet time to actually even start the first reading of this bill. I do think that is worrying. This bill does have the support of many parties in this House and it could have proceeded an awful lot faster had the Government had the will to do so. But it does not seem that that will has been there until quite recently.So here we are at the first reading. Labour will support the bill going to the select committee but we do so with a warning to the Government. We know from past experience with bills like this that we can make an awful lot more progress if parties are consulted on the drafting of the bill before it actually hits the House. We could actually fast track and proceed in a better way with this type of legislation—Hon Judith Collins: I haven’t got Andy’s phone number.SUE MORONEY: —and I know that the Minister of Justice does not agree. She does not like the idea of cross-party support for any of these measures but where it does exist the Minister should actually take advantage of that. If she was a good Minister she would have taken advantage of that and actually made sure that we had a bill come into the House that had the goodwill and support of the parties that do want to support it. I think we would then have much better select committee processes in place.But it will be very interesting to see what submitters do have to say on this bill because I think that the fact that it has not had wide consultation will mean that there will be issues that will need to be addressed. Of course that is what the select committee process is for. However a better Government a more open Government and a more accessible Government would actually do better consultation at the outset. That is certainly the history that the Labour Party brings to this particular issue.So what does the bill do? Well the bill empowers the High Court to issue a public protection order that would allow for detention of a person in a secure facility for a potentially indefinite time frame. So these are very serious issues that we are addressingin this bill. There are fundamental issues around human rights and around making sure that indefinite time frames are used appropriately albeit in an ambulance at the bottom of the cliff approach to this issue.The bill is a proportionate balance and that is why it would have been a good idea for parties to have had some input into this before it hit the debating chamber. There is a proportionate balance between the State’s legitimate objective of protecting citizens—which is an important function of this House—from almost certain serious sexual or violent harm and the right of those on a public protection order to be subject to the least restrictive form of detention to achieve that objective. So that is the balance that we must strike here. That is the balance that we must strike and I feel we would have been better prepared for that had there been that consultation.Although it is possible that detainees will never be released from a public protection order there are however some pathways for their release. Those pathways will include a management plan—as others have already said—rehabilitation treatment regular and early review of status and post-release supervision.But would it not be good if we did not have to debate these issues at all in this Parliament? Would it not be great if instead we got at the front end of it? If we were doing that properly—at the front end—we would not have had the New Zealand Police actually stop reporting the incidence of domestic and family violence in its annual report last year. All of the literature on this issue Minister tells us that the more we know about domestic violence and its impacts what causes it and how we get to that point the more able we will be to address it as a society and to stop it in its path.Those are the sorts of measures that we ought to be taking in this Parliament. Instead that Government is busy actually stopping information from being made known at the outset. If we do not know if we sweep it under the carpet and try to look the other way—as the annual report of the New Zealand Police is attempting to do—instead of getting to grips with this very ugly black problem that we do have in New Zealand then we will continue to be debating these ambulance at the bottom of the cliff bills. Instead of getting in front of the issue instead of stopping the harm instead of stopping the hurt we will continue to deal with the aftermath.