Parker David: Drug and Alcohol Testing of Community-based Offenders and Bailees Legislation Bill — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeParker David: Drug and Alcohol Testing of Community-based Offenders and Bailees Legislation Bill — Second Reading[Sitting date: 19 November 2015. Volume:710;Page:8348. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon DAVID PARKER (Labour): The Labour Party is supporting this legislation because we agree it is sensible where people are serving community-based sentences be they on bail or parole that the authorities can monitor conditions that are imposed upon them relating to drug and alcohol use. That said I have to take issue with something that the prior speaker Kanwaljit Singh Bakshi just said. He said that the Government has an objective of reducing reoffending rates. I want to highlight what is happening in respect of the—at the moment—contentious issue around serious sexual crimes. Do you know how it is cutting reoffending rates? It is actually not prosecuting and convicting those people in the first place.You might think that that is a throw-away remark; it is actually grounded in fact. We have an increasing number of serious sexual crimes being committed. We know that from the statistics. We also know that we have fewer convictions for those crimes in total so despite a higher number of total offences there are fewer convictions and the clearance rate of those crimes is lower as well as the conviction rate. So there is more crime in this area fewer convictions and fewer clearances. That is not a record that the Government should be proud of.I want to turn to another issue. We agree I think on all sides of the House here—I think there is very wide agreement—that this is a good piece of legislation giving the authorities further powers to monitor people including those on parole. People who serve a sentence for the most serious of crimes—murder—are sentenced to life imprisonment. They are generally then released after a period—depending on sentence but it is generally around 14 years—and then for ever whenever they are released from prison they are on parole for life because they are sentenced to life imprisonment but they are after a period released on parole. So those people the most serious of criminals are on parole for the rest of their lives. The parole conditions can include monitoring for alcohol and drug abuse so as to minimise the risk to society that they will reoffend.Just yesterday in this House we were having a discussion as to why it would be prudent to send to a select committee the legislation relating to returning prisoners from Australia. The Labour Party had suggested a way in which we could guard against problems in that bill that had not been thought of in the truncated process that was whacked through under urgency. Because of negligence by the Government the bill had not been introduced until yesterday and had to pass through all stages before those flights landed with large numbers of serious criminals coming from Australia. We knew that it had to be done under urgency but we also knew that doing it under urgency meant that some of the flaws in that legislation would not be picked up. So we said that that bill should be passed through all stages in one version with a termination date of a year and a second version of that bill should go to a select committee immediately so as to take effect on the expiration of the other bill in a year and we would sort out the problems in the meantime. This is an example of a serious problem.You know we have heard from the Government how important this bill is so that we can monitor people on parole. Well what happens to those people who are coming back from Australia with murder convictions? Does this bill apply to them? Can I have an answer to that from the Government? No I cannot because the answer is no it does not. That problem could have been fixed in the next few months by the parallel process that I have been talking about for fixing this aspect of the legislation that applies to returning offenders from Australia.At the select committee any one of us could have listened to this debate—this thought had not occurred to me until I actually prepared for this debate today. I did not think of this yesterday when we were considering the returning offenders legislation. We would have had submissions from the Law Society from Rape Crisis from the people who represent the interests of victims of crime from rehabilitation people like People at Risk Solutions or the Howard League for Penal Reform—someone would have picked it up even if no MP did. They would have said that we need to make sure in respect of these people who would have had parole conditions in Australia and are now returning to New Zealand unsupervised that the New Zealand authorities have the ability to appropriately supervise them and protect the New Zealand public by having similar parole conditions imposed in New Zealand including in respect of drug and alcohol abuse and the monitoring thereof. They would have picked up that it is absolutely obvious that this legislation should be applying to those people too.I think this is yet another illustration of—I have got to say it—the belligerent myopic stubbornness of Amy Adams on this occasion. What I was proposing through the Labour Party would not only have got the balance right in respect of protecting the civil liberties of New Zealanders and making sure that we are not going too far in the legislation; but as I said in those debates it would have ensured that also we were properly protecting the New Zealand public. As a consequence the day before the Government stands up and heralds this legislation as better protecting the New Zealand public we have not picked it up—we have not picked it up. We have not heard from the Government that we have got this gap now in the New Zealand legislation that means that the Drug and Alcohol Testing of Community-based Offenders and Bailees Legislation Bill which applies to amongst others people who are on parole will not be applying to the people who are coming back from Australia.Having alerted the Government to the issue I hope that the Government or its officials actually listens to this debate and has the good grace to come down here in the Committee stage and actually amend this legislation before it goes through to make sure that it applies to those returning offenders. But it does show how important it is to New Zealanders that you have a decent Opposition that is actually pointing out the negligence of this Government when it comes to protecting the interests of New Zealanders. I am shocked that our offer from the Labour Party—we offered to support that legislation through all stages under urgency. We offered to support Government members on the Business Committee to make sure that a parallel copy of the bill could go through at the same first reading so that we were debating two versions at the same time. We could have done that by leave of the House. All parties I think would have cooperated with that.Todd Barclay: It’s Thursday now.Hon DAVID PARKER: “Thursday now.” It is Thursday—that is right. And what is your point? Is that your only contribution?Jono Naylor: He’s just waiting his turn.Hon DAVID PARKER: He is waiting his turn right. Well it would be good if the members of the National Government did stand up and take a call to explain why it was that just yesterday they refused to have a parallel copy of the legislation—which is now an Act—and that was passed in respect of returning offenders from Australia and elsewhere go to a select committee so that these very sorts of problems could be sorted out.I have probably said enough in respect of that issue. I will return to the original theme of this legislation—Todd Barclay: Oh that would be novel.Hon DAVID PARKER: —which is that it is obviously desirable—well it would be novel—The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): No. I am going to ask the member to resume his seat. I am going to suggest to members on my right that the member is making a serious contribution on very serious legislation that affects the lives and the safety of New Zealanders. I think flippant interjections like those made by two members are inappropriate in this circumstance.Hon DAVID PARKER: We all know in this House that drug and alcohol abuse is associated with criminal offending. When people are under the influence of drugs and alcohol their inhibitions reduce and they are more likely to do silly things that they might themselves later regret but that certainly their victims are adversely affected by. Accordingly it is good if we can as we move towards community-based sentences—and I would acknowledge the Hon Bill English in terms of some of the moral leadership that he has shown in the National Government in terms of recognising the ineffectiveness of some prison-based sentences and how it is more desirable that you have programmes both within prisons and after imprisonment to minimise recidivism. I think the Hon Bill English deserves some credit for that and I give it to him. If you are going to move to those treatment programmes and things part of the way in which you make them work is through the sorts of monitoring that is proposed by this bill and that is why the Labour Party will be supporting it.