Sepuloni Carmel: Sentencing (Offender Levy) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Sepuloni Carmel: Sentencing (Offender Levy) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:658;Page:7137] 
CARMEL SEPULONI (Labour) 
: 
 I will carry on from where the Hon Lianne Dalziel was with regard to the amount of money that will be collected through this levy and the fact that the National Government itself seems a little bit confused over how much the scheme will cost to run. 
Just looking at Part 1 we can see that this whole Sentencing (Offender Levy) Amendment Bill is tied up in some major bureaucracy. The fact is that its provisions will cost a lot of money to run and at the end of the day the amount of money collected will be minimal. At one point Mr Simon Power was claiming that the scheme would collect about $5 million a year for victims but it is interesting that he was then forced to scale back that prediction to $13.6 million over the first 4 years. I would not be surprised if we were to see a lot more scaling back as time goes on as the Government realises that the cost of collecting this money will be a lot more than the amount actually collected. When we subtract the estimated $1.3 million it will cost to set up the levy and the estimated $1.5 million a year it will cost to run suddenly we have basically halved the amount the victims will gain. 
So we on this side are a little bit disappointed. It is another situation where this Government introduces legislation and all it is is window dressing. At the end of the day it will achieve very little for the victims the Government is purporting to support. We will not oppose the bill but as I said it is another example of legislation that does not hurt much but does not do much. We are kind of on the fence about whether we should support it because it is not going to hurt anyone but it is also not going to do much. So yes it is a very difficult situation to be in. 
It is a shame that this National Government is attempting to raise unrealistic expectations among the public about what the Government will be able to deliver through this bill. Victims of crime are going to be disappointed. It is quite sad because they would have seen the publicity about the bill they would have heard what the National Government is saying with regard to the perception it is trying to create and they would have felt hopeful that something would be there for them but there will be nothing. 
As the Hon Lianne Dalziel has said it is completely contradictory for this Government to pretend that it is setting up this levy because it cares about victims of crime and at the same time to talk about making cuts to the accident compensation entitlements of victims of crime. As Lianne Dalziel was saying on the one hand the Government takes away and on the other hand it gives. But at the end of the day what it is giving does not make up for what it has taken away. If this Government really cared about victims it would not be attempting to make sexual abuse victims go to the media or an MP to have the Accident Compensation Corporation (ACC) reverse its decisions to limit their counselling. We heard today an example of this. A Taranaki grandmother of two young boys who have been raped sodomised and beaten was forced to go to the media and to her local MP to beg for counselling for the children. The ACC-approved counsellor said that they needed counselling the police said that they needed counselling but ACC turned them down. It seems that a new step in the procedure could be trial by media or MP; that seems to be what this Government is attempting to do. In terms of the $50 levy we on this side of the Chamber do not think that it really makes up for what the Government has just taken away with regard to the ACC entitlements that victims of sexual abuse will no longer be entitled to. If this Government really cared about victims it would not be cutting the entitlements that families of suicide victims currently receive. 
This offender levy scheme will require a bureaucracy to administer it. The collection costs are likely to outweigh the returns. Since this Government has come into office all we have heard about is the need to cut back on bureaucracy and here it is creating more bureaucracy—bureaucracy that will not be effective. It would be more effective if this Government decided to give the money it will take to set up this bureaucracy to Victim Support. It is already difficult enough to collect reparation from criminals so what makes National think it will be easier to collect this levy? It is going to be very difficult to collect $50 off prisoners to add towards the fund that the Government is creating. It is unfair for victims of crime—