Ardern Jacinda: Returning Offenders (Management and Information) Bill — First Reading Second Reading In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeArdern Jacinda: Returning Offenders (Management and Information) Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee[Sitting date: 17 November 2015. Volume:710;Page:8069. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]JACINDA ARDERN (Labour): This bill obviously sits in two rather concise parts. Part 1 is really the opportunity for the Committee to talk about the relevant legislation which this bill heavily references. I think it is really important that we make sure that those references are accurate. As a member from the Greens has already pointed out where the bill was seeking to mirror the legislation that sets out what identifying particulars the police can seek it actually went broader and further than existing legislation in New Zealand. I think it is important that we pay attention under the preliminary provisions to ensure that this bill does not overreach. Because as the Minister said in her first reading speech she has tried to draft a piece of legislation that substantively mimics existing legislation in New Zealand. So that is why in my contribution to the Committee I will be looking at the comparisons between this bill and existing legislation.I want to start with the purpose clause because obviously in the purpose clause you would hope that the Government would capture the primary aim of this legislation. The purpose clause states that “The purpose of this Act is to obtain information from returning offenders …”. Note there that it is from returning offenders. There is an absence of talking about obviously the agreement that we have signed with Australia because we know now from the Minister of Justice that we are receiving incomplete information for some offenders. So we are in this Act setting out how we will obtain information from returning offenders and secondly “establish release conditions for offenders returning to New Zealand following a prison sentence of more than 1 year in an overseas jurisdiction.”There are two really important points in that purpose clause. Firstly there is the question around the other jurisdictions. We are talking about just overseas jurisdictions in this purpose clause. A lot of the discussion in this House has been restricted to Australia. I would find it really helpful if the Minister in the chair could share with us because none of the regulatory impact statements discuss any additional analysis carried out beyond Australia what kind of information-sharing agreements we have with other overseas jurisdictions that will allow this bill to apply to them? How workable is it for those overseas jurisdictions? With New Zealand and Australia we know we have comparable legislation. Is it possible to make sure that we interpret overseas offences in the same way for a jurisdiction that goes beyond Australia? That is the first point.The second point from the purpose clause is that nowhere in that purpose clause does it talk about the safety of the community reintegration or rehabilitation. The words again are simply to “establish release conditions”. The reason I raise this is that within the Parole Act which is heavily cross-referenced in this legislation yes there is a relatively short purpose clause but that is because within the Parole Act 2002 it was pretty groundbreaking in the fact that it established a set of what were called guiding principles. So section 7 of the first part of the Parole Act 2002 talks about the guiding principles of the Parole Act an excellent piece of legislation that the Hon Phil Goff worked tirelessly on right up until 2002 when it was introduced. Some of those guiding principles are around the way that the Parole Board itself makes a decision about the release of a prisoner. Obviously that goes beyond the jurisdiction of this purpose clause because the decision has already been made for release. But it also goes to the guiding principles of release conditions.For instance we see in the relevant guiding principles of the Parole Act which is heavily cross-referenced in this bill that in section 7(2)(a): “Other principles that must guide the Board’s decisions are—(a) that offenders must not be detained any longer than is consistent with the safety of the community and that they must not be subject to release conditions that are more onerous or last longer than is consistent with the safety of the community;”. Those would have been useful guiding principles to establish in the purpose clause of this legislation because as the Minister has set out we are trying to mirror that legislation in this legislation and those guiding principles sitting alongside that purpose clause would have given I think some groups both the comfort and the satisfaction that we are not trying to apply here double jeopardy an extra layer of conditions on someone who has already served their time but rather a proportionate set of conditions. So that was a lost opportunity I think in that purpose clause not to have say some principle clause alongside it.Coming back then to the idea though of reintegration and reducing reoffending. If we look at the regulatory impact statement when it talked about the purpose of this bill it said that “The overarching goals are to protect the public from reoffending and provide greater support for the reintegration of returning offenders.” That in the executive summary of the regulatory impact statement is meant to be the main goal of this bill and yet none of that language is contained in the purpose clause. Because if for instance you were looking to the overarching goal of protecting the public from reoffending and providing greater support you would surely use the evidence that the Ministry of Justice has around what the most successful way to prevent reoffending is.I had a little look on the Ministry of Justice website to find what it was setting out as best practice when it comes to reducing reoffending. It has a little document here called “Effective interventions to reduce re-offending”. Again if that was the primary purpose of this bill I would have expected some of this to be contained in the purpose clause or even in the bill. But when we look at this set of guidelines—yes it does pertain to youth offending because obviously that has been a focus of the Ministry of Justice. It is an area where we assume that we have a better opportunity to reduce reoffending but the principles are the same. It states: “Good interventions that reduce re-offending are based on key principles to ensure they are effective when implemented and include key components …”. These are the key components—this is what I would have expected either in the purpose clause or at least in Part 1 of the bill: “To ensure interventions are effective they: start with a good assessment of a person in the context of their friends family whānau and community to identify needs and re-offending risks.” Nowhere do we see in the purpose clause or in this bill set out that there would be any analysis of that kind of those offenders.Secondly “work with the young person holistically to provide timely and appropriate support …”. We know there is no support set out in this bill for those being reintegrated because there was not even a Budget bid made for it—it is simply around monitoring. Also “focus on getting a young person back into education and training …”—and in this case it would be work—and “focus on transition back into the community”. So if the overarching goal according to the regulatory impact statement was protecting the public from reoffending I would have expected to see some of the Ministry of Justice’s guiding principles around reducing reoffending somewhere up front in this bill. They are completely absent not just from the purpose clause but from the bill itself.Instead what does it canvass as the options? In the regulatory impact statement option 1 is enhanced support services; option 2 is registration and monitoring of returned offenders—and we know that the definition of those is set out in Part 1; option 3 is a mandatory system imposing release conditions on specified groups of offenders; option 4 is a discretionary system where the District Court imposes release conditions on individual offenders. We have essentially in this bill a hybrid of options 3 and 4. Maybe that is why the purpose clause has not included anything that speaks to the wider issue of community safety by reducing reoffending because it did not opt for that option. It could have combined them but that is not what the bill has provided.I want to come down a little further under the interpretation clause because as I have set out we need to make sure that we analyse each of these clauses to check that they are being used appropriately. I want to ask the Minister in the chair a question though. Under “overseas jurisdiction” it includes the self-governing States of the Cook Islands Niue and Tokelau. Why has that been included? It “excludesthe islands and territories within the Realm …” but not the protectorate. Is there anything to suggest from Niue or the Cook Islands or Tokelau that they plan on bringing in a regime like that? Because otherwise it seems interesting to me that they are specifically included in this regime and in this monitoring regime.