Returning Offenders (Management and Information) Bill — In Committee Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeReturning Offenders (Management and Information) Bill — In Committee Third Reading[Sitting date: 17 November 2015. Volume:710;Page:8103. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Tuesday 17 November 2015(continued on Wednesday 18 November 2015)Returning Offenders (Management and Information) BillIn CommitteeDebate resumed.Part 2 Returning offenders: management and information (continued)JACINDA ARDERN (Labour):I want to return to the element of debate that my colleague the Hon David Parker raised during the debate on Part 2 of this bill. On this side of the Chamber this element of Part 2 demonstrates to us why we should be undertaking a dual process with this piece of legislation because this appears from our perspective to be a drafting flaw in Part 2 of the bill.As has been discussed previously this bill derives a lot of its meaning through the cross-referencing of other Acts primarily the Parole Act but also under clause 10 of the Returning Offenders (Management and Information) Bill the Policing Act 2008. That part of the bill makes particular reference in clause 10 to the ability of police to detain returning offenders—returning offenders being the entire cohort not just returning prisoners—for the purpose of taking identifying particulars. It will seem obvious on first blush why we would want a provision like this in the bill. The ability for the police to detain is set out in clause 10(2) “for a period that is no longer than is reasonably necessary in the circumstances for a constable to take the identifying particulars of the offender”. That is similar language to what is used in the Policing Act. In a sense what we are doing here is allowing the police once a returning offender comes back into our borders to take relevant information for police files. When I say “relevant information” we have codified that in this legislation by cross-referencing the Policing Act.And it is not just identifying particulars that we are seeking; for the purposes of the Criminal Investigations (Bodily Samples) Act we are also seeking DNA samples where that prisoner qualifies under the bodily samples Act. But the bit that I want to dwell on again—itwas raised by David Parker and the Hon Amy Adams undertook to take the issue away but when the Committee rose last night it seemed particularly clear to us that there would be no movement on this issue and this is the problem. Under the Policing Act 2008 Part 3“Powers operations and offences” section 32(5) states: “‘identifying particulars’ means in relation to a person any or all of the following: (a) the person’s biographical details (for example the person’s name address and date of birth):”—we have already highlighted that this will obviously be incomplete information given many of the people returning to New Zealand will not have a specific address—“(b) the person’s photograph or visual image: (c) impressions of the person’s fingerprints palm-prints or footprints”. Obviously here we are not talking about DNA because that is covered by the Criminal Investigations (Bodily Samples) Act.Nowhere in these requirements under “identifying particulars” in the Policing Act which is the direct reference for this bill is there anything about taking information about the nature of the deportee’s offence or offences. There is an obvious reason for that according to the Policing Act and that is because within domestic legislation—of course if they are in a police station having their particulars taken it is because the police have charged them with an offence and they of course know by default what offence has been committed. It makes sense.For this legislation we have got a completely different set of circumstances. For the legislation that we are debating here the person will have been charged and convicted in another country. We do not necessarily have that complete information so when we take those identifying particulars it would make sense that in Part 2 of this bill we be very specific about allowing the police to require that information to be shared. One might argue—the Minister could argue; the officials might try to argue—that we might have that information from an overseas jurisdiction from which the person has been deported.We know that that may not necessarily be the case.How do we know that? Because in our discussions with the Minister in the lead-up to this bill being developed new section 27(1A) from memory was added quite late in the piece because the Minister discovered that the 20 individuals who are being deported to New Zealand this week did not have complete information. New section 27(1A) in Part 2 has been added quite late by the Ministry of Justice for good reason—to allow those with serious offences for instance sexual assault murder rape; what we would consider to be serious offences—to have the courts required to issue interim orders unless there is any reason not to. We know that we may not have complete information about some of those offenders in order to make a complete application in that early stage when they first arrive. So the fact that new section 27(1A) exists demonstrates to us the incomplete information that is coming back with some of these deported individuals and acts as further evidence of why there should be under clause 11 of Part 2 under the provision about police taking identifying particulars an additional set of particulars and that is the nature of offending—the nature of the offences—and it could be that you could define it as “for which the individual was deported from an overseas jurisdiction”. As it stands the Policing Act 2008 is incomplete for the purposes of this bill.If the Minister refuses to add this we are creating a rod for our own back and we will have a farcical situation where a tourist coming into New Zealand for the purposes of visiting casually will be required to give more information on an immigration declaration at the border than we will require a person who is being deported back to New Zealand because of their offending and that is because we will not be requiring that same level of disclosure and we should be. It would be farcical to simply rely on being able to access information via Interpol in order to complete information we could simply require to be shared by an offender. For goodness’ sake! We are taking their DNA samples. That is the most invasive gathering of information that is possible under New Zealand law and yet we will not require them to disclose their offences.From Labour’s perspective this particular drafting oversight demonstrates to us why—and I highlight this again—we would have liked within this part or perhaps attached to the title and commencement clauses a sunset clause which would mean that this bill would expire within a year and at the same time we would be passing a duplicate bill at first reading that would then progress through the House through all stages to allow us to pick up these kinds of errors and to allow us to give the public time to have their say. It would also allow the legal fraternity to have their say on this piece of legislation and we would make sure at that point that such errors did not occur. We do not believe that simply having a review after 2 years is sufficient. It means that errors like this would remain longer than is necessary and this Parliament does not operate on the basis of trial—that we put out a law and just see how it goes without having a proper process up front and that is essentially what we are doing here.I would really appreciate the Minister giving us a final word on whether she will be undertaking to make that drafting change. Otherwise we think it is farcical that it is not included and again it proves our point on the rushed nature of this legislation.I want to speak very briefly in the 1 minute I have remaining to a similar issue around the default provisions in the Parole Act which this part references and it is the standard release conditions. Again we have this bizarre reference in this bill in clause 4(2) that says: “In this Act unless the context otherwise requires a term that is used but not defined but that is defined in the Parole Act has the same meaning as in that Act.”So basically it is a catch-all that says: “If we haven’t defined something and you’re a bit confused and you don’t find it here you should find it in the Parole Act we hope.” It is a catch-all phrase because of the obviously rushed drafting. The Parole Act 2002 standard release conditions on reading are not designed for someone who is deported from overseas are heavily reliant on existing information being available are heavily reliant on their being released to a known residence and are heavily reliant on that person not being transient. These standard release conditions which we are cross-referencing here are not necessarily fit for purpose for people who are being deported. Again it shows the rushed nature of this bill.CHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka): If I had been part of the select committee process which of course has not happened on this bill there are some questions that I would want to tease out as part of that process. I want to turn particularly to clause 17 of Part 2 “Criteria for determination that person is returning prisoner”. One of the things that I would have wanted to tease out through the select committee process is the comparability of laws and sanctions in different jurisdictions to ensure that we capture through this clause all of the people whom we hope to capture. So it seems to me that the principle that we are trying to achieve here is to ensure that somebody who is coming back to New Zealand having been sentenced offshore is treated in New Zealand in a similar way to the way they would have been treated had they been sentenced for that offence here in New Zealand.The wording of clause 17 leaves a little bit of ambiguity which I would like to seek some reassurance on from the Minister in the chair Nicky Wagner. Clause 17(1) says: “The Commissioner must determine that a person is a returning prisoner if the Commissioner is satisfied that the person—(a) has been convicted in an overseas jurisdiction of an offence for conduct that constitutes an imprisonable offence in New Zealand;”. So the first part of that suggests to me that if someone has been sentenced offshore for something that is not imprisonable in New Zealand they would not therefore be covered.Other jurisdictions have things that are illegal that in New Zealand are not illegal. So if somebody had been sentenced offshore and is returning to New Zealand and that was not an illegal activity they would not therefore be covered. My understanding of what the Minister of Justice contributed in the debate yesterday was that that therefore meant they would not be covered. The Minister used the example of some jurisdictions having imprisonable offences for criticism of the monarchy for example. If somebody did that offshore and was imprisoned for that and came home to New Zealand they would not be covered because in New Zealand that is not an imprisonable offence. But when we get to clause 17(1)(b) it says “has in respect of that conviction been sentenced to—(i) a term of imprisonment of more than 1 year; or (ii) 2 or more terms of imprisonment that are cumulative the total term of which is more than 1 year;”. The reason that I am interested in this is that different jurisdictions will obviously treat things more severely or more leniently than they may be treated in New Zealand.So the question that I have is if someone had served a prison sentence overseas for example that might have been significantly less than what they would serve in New Zealand and therefore does not fall within this criterion does that not mean therefore that we are not capturing all of the people whom we are attempting to capture through this legislation? So had they been sentenced offshore to say 6 months’ imprisonment for something that in New Zealand would have given them a minimum prison sentence of say 2 years why would they not be captured by this? That is one of the questions that I would like to get some reassurance from the Minister on because it seems to me that clause 17(1)(a) suggests that what we are trying to do is achieve consistency with New Zealand law yet clause 17(1)(b) does not have any such additional requirement in terms of the length of the sentence. So I would like to get some further clarification and advice from the Minister on that.The next part in clause 17(1)(c) says: “is returning or has returned to New Zealand within 6 months after his or her release from custody during or at the end of the sentence.” And again there are some areas of ambiguity that I would quite appreciate some clarification from the Minister on—and can I welcome the new acting Chairperson to his significant elevation and I congratulate him on that. Some clarity from the Minister just regarding the returning to New Zealand within 6 months is needed. The reason why I am interested in this is that if somebody is sentenced for child sex offences in an overseas jurisdiction they have completed their sentence are released into the community and have been at large within the community for more than 6 months why would they not therefore be covered by this clause and if they are going to be covered by other provisions what would those other provisions be? Those are the sorts of questions that had this bill been to a select committee I think we would have clearer answers to than the ones that we have had so far to date from the Minister.Those are the brief questions that I have for the Minister at this point in the debate. I have further questions as we go along but I see the Minister taking notes so I am hoping that we will get some answers to some of those before the debate proceeds.POTO WILLIAMS (Labour—Christchurch East): With your indulgence I would like to be able to give some context to my speech which I hope over the course of this debate becomes quite fulsome. Yesterday when I was in the House I tried on several occasions to rise to take a call on this particular bill and was unable to do so and I feel I must give my contribution some context.I was very disappointed to see the passage of this bill rushed through the House under urgency. There should be very good reasons why bills come to this House under urgency. Not only do we have one bill not only do we have two bills but we have three bills that this House needs to debate and review and pass under urgency. For the other two bills that are coming up there are valid reasons why this has to occur but for this bill I do not see why it has taken the Government almost a full year to get this bill to the House. When it does get here it is full of holes it is poorly drafted and it will require a significant amount of re-work at some stage. And are we going to be given the opportunity to do that in a timely fashion? No we are not. We are given 2 years to sit and wait and see how this bill develops over the next couple of years. The impact that that is going to have on the returning offenders is going to be a wait and see.I am very concerned that the Minister has done this because I would not have expected that of her. I do not heap praise on members of the Government often but I think that Minister Adams is a credible capable Minister and I would have expected better of her than this bill which appears to have been rushed at the last minute with amendments at the 11th hour before the bill is read in the House. Frankly it is not good enough. In fact I would have expected this type of drafting legislation to come from other Ministers across the House such as the one who will always have the ignominy of saying that worm farming is dangerous to workers.But this bill has got a really truncated process. Members of the Opposition and in fact members of the Government should be given the opportunity to speak on behalf of those who would have presented at select committee. We should be given the opportunity and we will be given the opportunity to speak their voice because they are unable to speak for themselves. There would be many submitters on this because this is a very emotional bill. There are many aspects of it in relation to the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act in relation to human rights and in relation to the safety of the public that need to be explored fully. We need to make sure that this House is given the opportunity to do that.I want to speak particularly to some of the aspects that have arisen notably around clauses 20 to 26 which talk primarily about the monitoring process that will happen once these people have landed. Let us face it they are sitting in a plane waiting at the end of the runway to taxi to come here and we are at this 11th hour attempting to put this legislation into place so that we can have some confidence in the safety that will go in place around monitoring them.From reading the regulatory impact statement it would appear there are many policy statements but no clear direction on how we are actually going to support these people when they arrive. That is a major concern because if this bill is about the safety of the New Zealand public and we have not decided how we are actually going to monitor these people—we have not got the policy developed and in place—there is a serious flaw here.I want to talk about the people from People at Risk Solutions in Christchurch and notably Helen who came and saw me several weeks ago with a woman in tow—I will just call her “J”—who arrived in New Zealand from Brisbane with 3 days’ accommodation arranged and $200 in her pocket. That is all she arrived with. She would have been caught up in this piece of legislation.How is it that we are going to be able to cope with the influx of offenders returning to New Zealand if we have not got the basics in place to actually support them? What is the impact? If we were at the select committee we would be asking the officials to give us the costing. What is it going to cost the New Zealand public to put this in place? We would be getting some really good information from officials about what the monitoring programme looks like. We would be getting some really clear steers from officials about what rehabilitation needs to go in place. We would be getting a really good understanding of the implications of the human rights aspects of collecting DNA and blood samples of people.We would also have a much better idea of these offenders—what their offence history is. At the moment that is very unclear and in fact we do not know for sure that we will ever have the full disclosure of their offence history. How is that acting in the public safety of the citizens of New Zealand? If we had given this piece of legislation the due process it deserves we would have had many of those questions answered before the bill came back to the House for the Committee stage and final readings. Unfortunately we are not going to be given that opportunity.I sat here in the Chamber when members of the Opposition parties rose and asked questions and sought advice and put their speeches and not a single member of the Government stood and took a call to defend this process. The only person who spoke was the Minister at the end of the night. Why is that? Why are we not getting the Government MPs getting to their feet taking a call and actually providing some context—Hon Ruth Dyson: Maybe it’s because they’re useless?POTO WILLIAMS: You are absolutely right. They are like cocktail sausages on sticks sitting over on the other side of the Chamber just sitting there—Hon Ruth Dyson: Don’t be so rude about cocktail sausages.POTO WILLIAMS: I apologise to cocktail sausages. They are sitting there please—do they even have copies of the legislation in front of them? One member across the other side of the Chamber. How is that? You bring the House into urgency—not you Mr Chairman. The Government brings the House into urgency and the Government MPs do not even have the ability to stand up and defend their Government defend this urgency process and defend the fact that members of the public have not been able to have their say on this very serious matter.I challenge the members across the other side of the Chamber not to just stand and move closure motions but to actually get up and do the work of Parliament and do your debate. If you actually have your pieces of legislation in front of you that is for you to refer to. Anyway thank you for this opportunity. There is much more I would like to debate and I shall refer to that but at this stage I would like to see whether the Government MPs would like to take a call. Thank you.METIRIA TUREI (Co-Leader—Green): I just want to talk about the two amendments that the Green Party has put on the Table. They relate directly to the review clause which I think is clause 37 at the end of the bill. That clause provides that the Justice and Electoral Committee must 2 years after the commencement of this legislation review the operation of the legislation. The Minister has said that the reason for the 2-year time period is to give the law a chance to be operational and for various experiences to be had and to understand how the law may or may not be working effectively and what could be improved. She has also said numerous times including late last night that she is open to narrowing the time frame for that review.We have put two amendments on the Table to change the review period from 2 years from commencement of the legislation to either 12 months or 18 months from the commencement of the legislation. Our preference is for there to be a review in 12 months and that comes as a result of the information from the regulatory impact statement which describes just how many offenders the Government expects to be returned to New Zealand over the next period. It is saying that 280 will return to New Zealand in the 2016-17 year and again in 2017-18—plus we have a bunch arriving tomorrow and we will have more over the next few months. So there will be a large number of New Zealanders returning under section 501 of the Migration Act in Australia and subject to this bill that we are debating. We do not think that we need to wait much longer than 12 months to see how those 100 or 200 people will be affected by this legislation. There are more than enough examples of the implementation to know whether or not the law is working effectively and what we should be doing to change it. If the review is delayed much longer than 12 months from now the chances of fixing the law before the next election are very slim.I will just go back and say that the 2-year review currently in the bill means that the review will not start until about the same time as the general election in 2017. If it starts just before the general election in 2017 nothing will happen for the entirety of the 3-month election period and probably nothing until the beginning of 2018 at least because of the time it takes to get Parliament up and running again. So the actual review itself might well be 2½ years away and possibly no changes will be made for 3 years—and that frankly is just too long. So let us bring the review period back to a more reasonable time frame where the process starts at least a year before the general election gives a chance for a few months of review by the select committee and then gives an opportunity for the Government to look at the recommendations for change and to construct the legislation for change and for that to go through the House.As we have seen with this particular bill we know how long policy development and the drafting of legislation can take. We do not want to be in this situation again where we have urgency for such critical legislation that deals with criminal law and human rights. It is a very poor process for such important legislation. Our argument is: bring the review forward and make sure that it can be completed and that the legislation can be drafted and preferably passed well before the general election. That way we will know both that the human rights of the offenders who are returning will be better protected because there will be a closer review of what happens to them—there will certainly be enough examples of how the legislation affects offenders because so many will be returning in the next 12 to 18 months—and that the lawmaking process can get back on track. We want to have good quality law. We do not want to be debating law that is riddled with mistakes. They are not intentional mistakes; it is just the consequence of a rushed job.We are supposed to be professionals at the lawmaking business and we can do much better but only if the review clause in this bill is changed to make sure that we have the time to do our jobs properly. We owe it to the New Zealand public to do our jobs as best we can and when we are making law about human rights and criminal law to apply all of our best efforts to the best quality job. So I am strongly advocating to all parties including the Minister and those Government parties to support preferably the 12-month review. I think that gives us the best amount of time but even the 18-month review period will at least get us started well before the election. It better upholds our reputation as a lawmaking institution that makes sure it does the best and creates the best possible law in these circumstances. Thank you.Hon DAVID PARKER (Labour): Can I thank Metiria Turei for those amendments and I am sure that the Labour Party would support something like that to bring forward the review. We still think it would be preferable to have a two-track process starting today which would have put a parallel bill to a select committee for consideration of submissions that could be called tomorrow by the select committee and be heard in the normal process and within a year we would have a fully worked-through parallel bill that fixed all the mistakes that no doubt there are in this bill—and there is no doubt that there are mistakes in this bill. That would take effect on the expiration of this bill which could then have a termination date of a year from today. That would be a better solution but the Government has rejected that. I think that that shows how abusive it is of parliamentary processes generally and how unconcerned it is to get the exact balance right between civil liberties but also how unconcerned it is to protect the members of the public properly in the interim period between now and that review which it has got currently set out there 2 years ahead.On that last point I want to return to an issue that I raised with the Minister of Justice last night which is that as far as I am aware there is nowhere in New Zealand lawa requirement for people who have got convictions overseas to disclose those to the New Zealand authorities. Government members are not saying I am wrong we have had no advice to the contrary from the Minister and it seems to be nonsensical. Someone can return to New Zealand with a serious criminal offence overseas and no New Zealand authority has got the right to get that information from them. It might get that information from Interpol sometimes. It might get it from a cooperating country like Australia sometimes. There are other countries in the world that are in no state because of their civil disorder to provide us with that information even if they wanted to. So no doubt there are instances in New Zealand where returning serious criminals do not have a duty to provide information on what those convictions overseas were.Let us take what happens under this bill. This bill applies only in respect of orders for returning prisoners if those people have been returned within 6 months of their release from custody—so we cannot find any protection in subpart 2 in Part 2 of the bill—and in respect of Part 1 the only thing that they are required to provide us with is identifying particulars and as I have said in earlier contributions those identifying particulars as defined in the Policing Act are biographical information. They go to identification of the person not their convictions. So there is no doubt in my mind that that classification of identifying particulars in this legislation does not extend to their prior convictions.I want to also point out another problem with this bill that I think is unintentional and again it points to why we should be having this two-track process. Clause 9 of the bill says that “The Police may as soon as is reasonably practicable request a returning offender to provide identifying particulars and may detain the offender under section 10 if the offender refuses.” Clause 10 then says that the right of detention applies for only 6 months after the offender’s return. Again it is clear that this requirement to effectively have a compulsion mechanism so that you can get those identifying particulars applies for only the first 6 months after someone’s return.What is the policy rationale for that? I do not understand why it is that you would not want to have particulars of people for whom maybe because of Australian incompetence or New Zealand authorities’ incompetence it does not happen for the first 6 months.All of the sudden there is no need to have the particulars of people who have committed serious offences but who were not picked up in the first 6 months. Indeed this actually shows a problem in this legislation in respect of what has already happened.I agree that you should not have retrospective legislation that places people at double jeopardy retrospectively but it is actually a different thing to say that prospectively information you should have collected previously but you have not collected because of the incompetence of the Government—that you should not actually have the right to collect that information in the future if that is necessary to protect New Zealanders. I think that it is proper that the New Zealand authorities get information on people who have had serious convictions overseas after they return to New Zealand even if you do not ask for it for the first 6 months. After this legislation passes we can do something in respect of the first 6 months but not thereafter.Another issue which actually cuts the other way is that we actually might be going too far in respect of some offences. I was thinking about situations that go the other way. If you are a person who is under 27 years old and you are a New Zealander you have got rights to live in the United Kingdom for up to 2 years and get a work permit. I think that is in general the rule. It might have been tightened a little but it is something like that. I know this to be a particularly relevant issue because it actually happened to a friend of mine. A friend of mine stayed over there for longer than the 2 years and was then at risk of prosecution. She actually departed from the UK but others do not and actually overstay in breach of the immigration laws in the UK. If they are convicted it is an imprisonable offence and it would be an imprisonable offence in New Zealand too the maximum sentence for which would be more than a year’s imprisonment I think.You would also be liable for deportation. Even if you were not deported you would be told that you were liable for deportation and you would find yourself coming back to New Zealand. You would actually be a returning offender within the definition of clause 7(a). We might want that but I have not heard any Government member or the Minister actually say that that sort of returning offender is going to be caught by this legislation. I think in theory they are and yet with regard to the person whom I have talked about earlier—the person who might have had a murder conviction or a paedophilia conviction in an overseas jurisdiction at some earlier period and who comes back to New Zealand—we have got no right to get the particulars of their prior offending even if they might pose a threat to the New Zealand public. That is another illustration of how this legislation might not be getting the balance right. It might be attaching to people to whom we as a Parliament might not think it should attach; it might not be attaching to people to whom it should attach in order to protect the public.That is another reason why I cannot see why the Government is being so stubborn about refusing to allow the parallel process where a second version of this bill goes to a select committee so that we can actually consider these issues. Members of Parliament on this side of the House have done their best to make these contributions upon a simple reading of the bill thinking what the implications might be. People who are more expert in areas of the law than we are—specialists or people from the Law Society with a special interest or victim impact groups—will have other issues with this bill that we have not thought of and we are not going to get the opportunity to improve this legislative regime as a consequence until we have a review.I suspect the Minister is going to come and say “Well look maybe the review period should be brought forward a little bit so it doesn’t coincide with an election.” and that is a good thing. I thank the Minister for that and we in the Labour Party would support that if the Minister were to do that.Finally—and I will just recap on one point for the benefit of the Minister of Justice who is now in the chair—I do not accept the circular definition point. One of the points the Minister made yesterday was there would be some circularity introduced because if you have the requirement to provide particulars but you do not know that they are an returning offender then you would not necessarily know to ask them and therefore it is circular. It is actually not circular; it is just that it would not always apply. Given that clause 9 in terms of the request for identifying particulars always applies—it does not expire after 6 months; the only thing that expires is the Government’s right to detain for non-compliance with the request to give identifying particulars—I think we are left with a gap in the law.It is a nonsense that someone who has returned from overseas—let us say someone is picked up on a suspected paedophilia charge outside a school. This could happen; it does happen in New Zealand. The police say “We don’t know about you. What have you been up to?” and that person says “Oh look I’ve just come back from overseas. I’ve been overseas for 10 years.” That person has got no duty to tell them whether in that 10-year period they were spending you know 10 years in prison in Pakistan or something for charges relating to children.That has got to be a nonsense and we can fix it in this legislation by requiring that a person who returns from overseas who is a New Zealander who has been convicted in an overseas jurisdiction of an offence that constitutes an imprisonable offence in New Zealand and who was liable for deportation—you do not have to be deported; you just have to be liable for deportation—has a duty to provide information to the police if requested as to what their conviction was overseas and what their penalty was. It seems to me a very sensible proposition from the Labour Party so I would hope that Parliament backs my amendment.Hon AMY ADAMS (Minister of Justice): I want to take a call to talk on a typescript amendment I have tabled this morning picking up concerns and discussions that I have had with other parties over the course of the evening. I said last night in my contribution that I was happy to continue to talk to parties and if we found areas of common ground to support them where they made sense. This morning I have spoken with the Green Party the Māori Party and the Labour Party—I am sorry Mr O’Rourke I have not had a chance to reach out to you—around the clause on the length of the review. There was some concern expressed to me that there was a preference of this Committee that the review period be shortened from 24 months or 2 years to 18 months. The Government will support that and so I have tabled an amendment doing that which will be coming to members. It also just picks up some advice I have had from the Clerk which I do not think will be of any great concern to the Committee.Just so that you are all aware the bill as introduced talked about referral to the Justice and Electoral Committee. This amendment is just providing more flexibility so that the Clerk can nominate the appropriate committee because as we know various parliaments constitute committees in various different ways. So because it has just been tabled I will read it to you: “Replace clause 37 … with: 37 Review by select committee. A select committee to be determined by the Clerk of the House of Representatives must 18 months after the commencement of this Act review the operation of this Act and prepare a report on that review.” So in other respects it is the same but with a shortened time period and just making sure that there is no issue around the select committees at any point in time being reconstituted as the Clerk would have the ability obviously to determine the appropriate one which I do not imagine members will have any great concern with.I did just want to also come back to Mr Parker. We discussed last night that I would consider his typescript amendment around whether we need to add the requirement for a legal compulsion on returning offenders to give us their criminal histories. My view at that time was that it was a circular argument and that we would need to have their criminal histories to know that they were returning offenders to then collect the information but I undertook to confirm that. That is certainly the advice that I have had through from officials. Without their criminal history records we cannot classify them as returning offenders. The only way that we could make sure that was comprehensive would be potentially to require every returning New Zealander to disclose all criminal convictions and that is not a step I am prepared to take as an intrusion on New Zealanders returning to their home country.So firstly I am convinced that to do it in the manner proposed where it is only returning offenders is circular because we already know their criminal histories at that point but the other point I checked in discussion with Mr Parker was whether police were confident that they had the ability to get criminal history information from any jurisdiction. They assured me that they are. They assured me that they are and that they do not see that as necessary so on that basis we will not be supporting it.The other point I would make is that once a person is identified as a returning offender we of course have the ability to take their biometrics take their details and then of course continue to follow up. So we will have enough information to determine them as returning offenders and then in the future obviously with biometrics we can continue to build on that. But the police’s advice to me is that it is unnecessary the legal advice to me from my department is that it is circular as I had first thought and so on that basis we will not be supporting that amendment.KRIS FAAFOI (Labour—Mana): I thank the Minister of Justice for her contribution. There is an episode of The West Wing where the President’s chief adviser Leo McGarry paraphrases Otto von Bismarck about there being two things you do not want to see being made and that is laws and sausages. I think this is one of those instances where you wish you did not see a law like this being put together in this fashion. It has been rushed and I think the contribution that the Minister has made around an amendment she has just tabled and an amendment tabled by my colleague David Parker is pure evidence that the Government is rushing this piece of legislation through. It should have had time when it first had notice of the need to address these returning offenders and returning prisoners. It should have been addressed at the beginning of this year.Mr Chair I know you want me to speak to Part 2 so I will talk about it in the context of what is and what is not in this part. What is in this part is some of the easy stuff and what is not in this part is some of the stuff that there would have been questions about if this were to go through a select committee process. Some of my colleagues have talked about that stuff which includes some of the services that would help reintegrate and monitor some of these returning offenders and returning prisoners.The easy stuff is in there. I will look at an example and that is clause 13 which states that it is an offence to not comply with a constable’s direction if they feel that they have to detain you or they want to get information from you about your offending or your convictions overseas. Clause 13 is pretty simple. The easy stuff is in there. But if we had the opportunity to sit down in a select committee—and it would have been the Justice and Electoral Committee or the Law and Order Committee—we and I think some of the submitters would ask some pretty basic questions of the Government around what we do with these people when they get here. What kinds of support services do we have for them? What do we do around reintegration? It is my understanding that when the Government took a snapshot of offenders or those who had been convicted and have come back from overseas over the last couple of years the reoffending rate of those people was roughly 20 percent higher than for those who had been released from New Zealand prisons. So we do have an issue because the likelihood is that these people coming to our shores having been deported will have a much higher reoffending rate than those who are released from New Zealand prisons.The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): I am going to interrupt the member. I am going to invite him to now move from a general second reading type of speech to a particular discussion of Part 2.KRIS FAAFOI: Thank you very much Mr Chair. I was speaking around reoffending. I guess in relation to David Parker’s amendment which changes clause 9 having more information about their offending and what level of risk they would pose would be helpful to the Government in being able to offer them those kinds of reintegration services. The fact that David Parker had to put forward his amendment shows the rushed nature and the ill-thought-out nature of this piece of legislation.For those at home who want to know what Mr Parker’s amendment is about it amends clause 9 around the identifying particulars for people who are deported to New Zealand. In clause 9 he wants to add the words “ and the details of any overseas conviction and overseas penalty for any such conviction of the returning offender”. You would think that one of the basic things in this piece of legislation would be to know not just who they are because as it stands we understand the identifying particulars just tell the authorities who this person is.To get an idea of how much of a risk they may be to the public—because this is what we want to make sure we can mitigate for for New Zealanders and this is what the Government claims it is putting this piece of legislation forward for—we want to know exactly what risk profile these guys and these women may have to the New Zealand public. But in the bill itself we do not have the mechanism to be able to find out what they may have been convicted of. So Mr Parker has seen fit to put forward this amendment to clarify what “identifying particulars” are. Are we surprised that we have had to do this? Well no. Within the regulatory impact statement we find a statement that is becoming all too common.KELVIN DAVIS (Labour—Te Tai Tokerau): I would like to talk to clauses 16 through to 20 regarding returning prisoners. Clause 16 talks about who is a returning prisoner. Clause 17 outlines the criteria for determining that a person is a returning prisoner. Clause 18 talks about the time for the commissioner to determine that that person is a returning prisoner. Clause 19 states that “[t]he Commissioner must serve a written notice on a person (P) who has been determined to be a returning prisoner.” Clause 20 though describes what that determination notice must look like. It states that a “determination notice must—(a) state that the person named in the notice (P) has been determined by the Commissioner to be a returning prisoner for the purposes of this Act; and (b) state that P is subject to release conditions under this Act; and (c) state the period for which P is subject to release conditions;” and sets out the standard release conditions. It states that the person “must report to a probation officer at a probation officer at a probation service centre within 72 hours of service of the notice; and (f) provide information about how to contact a probation officer;” and so on and so forth.But what this does is actually neglect the actual human side of this situation. If we take for example the planeload of prisoners who we believe are arriving in the next day or so if they are prisoners who have come off Christmas Island let me tell you now that they will be traumatised they will be upset and they will be in shock as to what has happened to them over the last few days. They will come here. They will not have legal representation when they get here. They will have difficulty making sense of anything that the authorities throw at them such as this determination notice that they are a returning prisoner.We have got to remember that these are people who are coming under extraordinary circumstances and that what are standard release conditions to New Zealand prisoners who have had time in prison here who have had access to their lawyers who have had access to legal advice—those conditions do not apply to the people who will be arriving on planes. Their lawyers are over in Australia. The chances are they have not seen their lawyers for probably 8 9 or 10 months of their detention because part of the system in Australia is that they are being denied regular access to their lawyers.So they are getting here without any legal representation without any support people around them without any support base whatsoever without their family or friends being at the airport to greet them and yet they are expected to make head or tail of this determination notice. All things going well it would be served on them immediately upon landing here in New Zealand or if not within a practical time but certainly not greater than 6 months out. Maybe after 4 or 5 months of being here they might actually have been able to settle down and just get their heads around what has actually happened to their lives. Their lives have been flipped into turmoil basically from being put in detention going through the whole situation in the detention centres—in particular Christmas Island—to then being taken off the island and being taken back to a prison in mainland Australia then being brought here.They will be in shock they have been traumatised they will not know what is going on and yet they are going to be whacked with this official notice without any legal support without any assistance—or very little assistance—from the authorities. They do not even know where they are going to be living. They do not know beyond 5 days what is in store for them. They will not have an address to go to. They will not know. If the motel that they are plonked in is in Auckland somewhere in 5 days’ time they might be in Hamilton they might be in Rotorua they might be in Whangarei—they might be anywhere in New Zealand. And then the whole situation changes because then they have got to find a new probation officer they have got to find other people to report to depending on the location where they are going to end up.So I have real concerns about the human side of this. It is fine for the work to be done here but it is basically in a vacuum without regard for what those men and woman have gone through. That is why I believe that this should not have been done through urgency. We have had enough time through the course of the year to write this legislation and to do a good job of it. Instead we have heard that it has been drafted in 12 days.DENIS O’ROURKE (NZ First): I think when considering the Returning Offenders (Management and Information) Bill we need to try to think about the practicalities of it and to try to take a practical approach to some of the issues that are bound to arise with new legislation. I support what a lot of other members have said about some of those issues.We are currently thinking a lot about Australia and its deportation of offenders from there but we also should think about some of the issues that may arise where people are being deported or who are just arriving indeed from other countries. Some of those countries will not be friendly countries. Some of those countries will be places from which it is difficult to get information. We need to think about some of those issues as well. So it is in that light that I believe that the Government should seriously consider and in fact adopt David Parker’s typescript amendment.I think he raises a very good point in that the term “identifying particulars” used in clause 9 and defined in clause 4 as having the same meaning as in section 32(5) of the Policing Act 2008 simply refers to the provision of name address date of birth and the provision of a photograph fingerprints palm-prints or footprints. That is all the information that that section provides. So what we are going to get as a result of this bill when it is enacted is that information.It seems to me that what we also need to be able to get—at the border if necessary or as soon as possible after a person returns whether from deportation or just arriving—is details of convictions. As I have said that may not actually be readily available from countries that are not friendly or cooperative or just do not have the facilities or the capacity or indeed the intention of providing that information for us so that information needs to be obtainable from the person concerned.Details of convictions are at the heart of the bill. It is that information that the rest of the bill actually depends on and yet the bill seems to be deficient in not really attending to this issue of being able to adequately require the person concerned to give that information and as soon as possible. So I think that David Parker’s amendment to clause 9 which would add the words “ and the details of any overseas conviction and overseas penalty for any such conviction of the returning offender” is absolutely necessary. I do not understand why the Minister is not seeing it in that light and actually adopting that amendment.I heard what she said about this idea of a circular argument but I do not think that washes at all. The point is this: the police or an immigration official or whoever is in the position of needing that information should be able to insist that that information be provided. It does not seem to me that that is in any other legislation. It does not seem to be in the Policing Act. I cannot see it there. It is not in this legislation. That is the information that is really fundamental to this legislation and yet there is not even a requirement for a person to respond when asked to give details about convictions or penalties.So I think that for that reason this amendment by David Parker is one of those that should be adopted by the Government. After all what possible harm could it do anyway? What is wrong with being able to ask and insist on an answer to a question as basic as “Do you have any convictions from the countries you have been in and what were the penalties?” and so on. That seems to me to be quite basic.I want to also move on to some of the other amendments that have been tabled and I think deserve consideration. One of those deals with clause 37 and that is a very important clause because we all know that this legislation is going to require review.JAMI-LEE ROSS (Junior Whip—National): I move That the question be now put.The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): We have now been on this part for 2 hours and I think it has been half an hour at least since I heard anything that was new. So I think the Committee is in a position to make a decision on the matter.A party vote was called for on the question that the question be now put.The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): While the Clerk is adding up the votes I will remind people—I will pretend I did not hear I think—that if people call for a division from a particular point of view it is a requirement to vote that way. I will not name the member who appears to have done the opposite.A party vote was called for on the question That the question be now put.Ayes 63New Zealand National 59; Māori Party 2; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.Noes 58New Zealand Labour 32; Green Party 14; New Zealand First 12.Motion agreed to.The question was put that the following amendment in the name of the Hon Amy Adams to clause 37 be agreed to:replace this clause with the following new clause:37Review by select committeeA select committee to be determined by the Clerk of the House of Representatives must 18 months after the commencement of this Act review the operation of this Act and prepare a report on that review.Amendment agreed to.The question was put that the following amendment in the name of the Hon David Parker to Part 2 be agreed to:insert in clause 9 “ and the details of any overseas conviction and overseas penalty for any such conviction of the returning offender” after “identifying particulars”.A party vote was called for on the question That the amendment be agreed to.Ayes 44New Zealand Labour 32; New Zealand First 12.Noes 77New Zealand National 59; Green Party 14; Māori Party 2; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.Amendment not agreed to.Part 2 as amended agreed to.Schedule 1 agreed to.Clauses 1 and 2The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): The honourable Grant—no.GRANT ROBERTSON (Labour—Wellington Central): I wish I was.The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): Well premature.GRANT ROBERTSON: I want to actually talk about both clauses 1 and 2 in some calls in this particular part of the debate. The first of those is to talk about clause 1 the title which will be the Returning Offenders (Management and Information) Act. It is quite clear that in terms of this title the “Information” bit is the focus of the bill. So we have had a number of contributions from members as we worked our way through Parts 1 and 2 about the way in which information is provided. We have had amendments proposed to try to ensure that the New Zealand public can feel secure that all the information that the New Zealand Police and the Department of Corrections need is being provided. The jury is out on that. We have certainly seen up to now some considerable difficulties about the provision of information. I even heard the Minister of Justice on the radio this morning unable to tell New Zealanders where the first load of people coming from Australia on an aeroplane would land—did not know she said.Hon Ruth Dyson: At an airport.GRANT ROBERTSON: Yes well that is a good guess Ruth Dyson that it will be at an airport. That narrows it down a little bit does it not? So it is still clear that there are difficulties and issues with the amount of information that is flowing to the Government.We also had the Minister of Justice tell us that she did not find out about this until February. Well that is hopeless. Clearly her sources of information are very poor. The New Zealand media was reporting it in January; the legislation was passed in Australia in December. So the flow of information to the New Zealand Government has not been good. The Minister this morning on the radio blamed the fact that this piece of legislation is now being rushed through under urgency on the fact that she did not get the information about the prisoners that was required to draft this legislation until September. That is just ridiculous. And if that is actually accurate—that the Australian Government has been withholding that information from the Minister of Justice—well it speaks volumes about the poor state of the relationship between New Zealand and Australia under this Government that the Minister of Justice did not even get access to the information required to draft this legislation until September. I actually do not believe that by the way. I think that that is just a case of the Minister finding an excuse for having dragged her feet on this issue from December last year.So the bill’s title that this will be the Returning Offenders (Management and Information) Act—yes it is about information there is absolutely no doubt about that but the failure of this Government to get on top of the flow of information on this issue I believe has been writ large by the Minister over the last couple of weeks. But the main part of the title that I want to focus on in this call is around the question of “Management”. So the title is the Returning Offenders (Management and Information) Bill and in the Chamber last night the Minister of Justice told us that we should not go looking in this piece of legislation for the way in which the offenders who are returning to New Zealand will be managed in terms of their reintegration. She told us last night that this was a justice bill. She said: “This is not a bill about reintegration.” Well just pause on that thought for a moment. Is that not what it is all about when somebody actually goes into prison or in this case returns to New Zealand as a person who has been imprisoned and ends up in an effective parole-like arrangement? Is not the management of them all about reintegration and rehabilitation? That is what this bill should have been about.To the credit of the officials that is what they thought this bill should be about. They wrote in the regulatory impact statement and in the advice that we have now seen in this Committee all about the importance of reintegration. They gave paragraphs of material to it. They put it in the objectives which should have been what this legislation ended up being about. And then the Minister of Justice stands up in this Chamber last night and says: “Don’t come looking in this legislation for information about what’s going to happen in terms of accommodation in terms of employment or in terms of health outcomes.”Every member of this Committee who represents an electorate in a large town or city has dealt with a prisoner who exits the prison system and falls through the gaps.Peeni Henare: That’s right. Come to Tāmaki Makaurau.GRANT ROBERTSON: That is right Mr Henare. In my office in Wellington Central I have prisoners who come in. They have spent their $300 from the steps to freedom grant within the first 24 hours and they do not have anywhere to live. We have to work with them because the Government decided not to fund the former Prisoners Aid and Rehabilitation Society now known as People at Risk Solutions properly any more. We have to work with them to find their way forward. Imagine being somebody who comes to New Zealand under these arrangements who has no backstop and has not lived here for 45 years. They have got nothing and the Minister of Justice says: “Well don’t come looking in this legislation for anything that’s actually going to really help with”—to quote the title of the bill—“ ‘Management’ of returning offenders.” The Minister says: “Don’t go looking in this bill to see if we’re actually going to sort out their accommodation.”Kelvin Davis raised this in the Chamber last night. What happens when those people come in? I heard the Minister say this morning: “Oh they will be met at the airport and they will be asked ‘Have you got somewhere to live?’ ‘Oh I don’t know. Maybe I do. I’ll go and stay with my cousin who I used to play with when we were 4 years old which is the last time I saw them.’ ” We know that information that is provided in those moments is often wrong or misleading. Answers are given by people to get out of the way. They do not want to deal with any of these officials any more. “Yes I’ve got somewhere to live.” Yes that is a satisfactory answer. Box ticked; away we go.What about the health outcomes and the health issues? There will be significant mental health issues involved not only I might say potentially for those who are the returning prisoners and offenders but also for others in the community who might know them or have some experience of dealing with them in some way—them or their families.Peeni Henare: Family in Australia.GRANT ROBERTSON: Yes. Mental health issues are one of the biggest issues in terms of reintegration: the support that is required to be able to become part of a community. Again the needs are greater here than they would be for released prisoners in New Zealand because the lack of whānau support the lack of family around actually will make those mental health issues even bigger. Where is that in this bill? Where is that in the bill that is about the management of returning offenders—that is what the title of the bills says: the “Management” of returning offenders. And the Minister says: “Don’t come looking in this bill for how we will actually manage them in terms of their mental health in terms of their accommodation needs in terms of how they will actually reintegrate into the community.” This is a perfunctory response a rushed response because the Government mucked around and failed to heed the warning signs coming out of the Australian lawmaking process and as a result that is not here in this bill.I actually think it was David Clendon from the Greens last night who got up and spoke about how as you followed through the advice of the officials the objectives that they put up and then you found your way to the purpose of the legislation it lost its focus. It suddenly became this very functional piece of legislation about information and its relationship with the Parole Act. So the title of this bill to my mind is actually a misnomer. This is not about the management of these returning offenders; it is in fact about the mismanagement of these returning offenders and the failure of this Government to have in place the kind of reintegration and rehabilitation regime that is now needed. These released prisoners and released offenders should not be coming back to New Zealand; they should be going to Australia where their family is. The Government has failed in its advocacy in that regard. Now it is doubling up on the failure by failing to put in place a proper reintegration programme.I just want to briefly in the remaining time left to me speak about clause 2 the commencement date and the fact that this comes into force on the day on which it receives its Royal assent. That will probably be today or tomorrow at the very latest. That is too late. That is a failure by this Government: the fact that here we are on 17 November 2015 when this will come into force. It was December 2014 when the Australian Parliament passed this legislation. I guarantee you if we look into the cables that emerge out of the New Zealand High Commission in Canberra there would have been one in December that said that a big change had just happened under Australian law about what happens to people who have served time in prison or who are regarded as being of bad character. I guarantee the New Zealand Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade officials were up to the task of doing that. Perhaps the Minister had gone off for her Christmas break; perhaps she was not focused on it. Come January there were articles in the newspaper. They would have been reported to the Minister but the Minister failed to recognise those.Tony Abbott came over here for the 1-day cricket game between New Zealand and Australia which New Zealand won—Kane Williamson hitting a six with New Zealand nine down. I was there. I saw John Key and Tony Abbott meeting. Apparently that was when they finally got around to first discussing this—in February. John Key perhaps in the euphoria of the Cricket World Cup forgot when he got back to Wellington to say: “You know what Amy Adams? We should actually be drafting up some legislation now so we are ready on this.” Did not bother to do that—did not bother to do that. Sat around and waited for information to come from Australia and then finally gets around to introducing a bill about 9 months later. That is hopeless; it is a failure.Hon TREVOR MALLARD (Labour—Hutt South): It is relatively unusual for me to take a call in the Committee stage but I will not be sitting in the Chair again on this bill. There are a couple of technical concerns that I do want to place on the record of the House. The more I have looked at it the more concerned that I am. I am speaking in particular to clause 2 of the bill which indicates that the bill is to come into force today or tomorrow depending on when it gets through and when it is checked. But because it is coming in so quickly my argument is that it has got to be technically right in its entirety.There are a couple of points that I want to check with the Minister of Justice to make sure that we have got the drafting exactly as the Government wants it. The first one goes to clause 17(1)(c) in Part 2 which is outside of this bit but is of timely essence. If there is an individual who in the Prime Minister’s words is a murdering rapist who has finished their sentence in Australia who goes to Christmas Island for 6 months and 1 day and then returns here are they intended to be covered? Because they are not covered by the bill. The drafting of the bill does not have them covered. The person who is 1 day out of Christmas Island will not be covered by this bill the way it is currently drafted because they have finished their sentence 6 months before. Christmas Island is not part of their sentence—so they will not be covered by this.The next question I want to ask I will put on the record that I have had a discussion about it with individuals who are responsible for the bill and they have a different opinion because they rely on the Interpretation Act. The question goes to clause 17(1)(a) and (b) and whether that offence or an offence and that conviction are automatically considered in the plural. I want to put to the Minister the case of someone who has had 10 convictions of assault and been sentenced to 4 months on each of them—so 10 convictions of assault sentenced to 4 months on each of them. Because they are separate convictions for separate offences that means that they do not meet the criteria according to this bill. They can be quite a serious offender—quite a serious serial offender—but they are completely different offences. They have not just beaten up six people in one pub; they are been to six separate pubs and beaten people up in each of them. They have had different convictions and different offences. That is not cumulative; they are separate offences. The sentencing might end up being cumulative but because they are separate offences then my argument is that this does not apply.So it is a pretty simple series of questions. I know that some officials are of the opinion that “an offence” means “offences” and “that conviction” means “those convictions” but generally when this Parliament is drafting laws and it deliberately means the plural because plural is more serious than singular it says so. It says “an offence” or “offences” and it says “that conviction” or “those convictions”. In my opinion this bill does not do that. I want to place that on the record and every argument that Mr Parker has used earlier as to a method of getting this bill better drafted applies.JACINDA ARDERN (Labour): It is my pleasure as it were to take a call on the title and commencement provisions within this bill. Obviously the commencement date in particular has been the source of robust debate in this Committee and I will again reiterate Labour’s position on that but I want to start with first a very short reference to the title clause. Obviously this bill—and there are a few iterations that I have seen during the quite rushed drafting of this bill but the title that we are working to now is the Returning Offenders (Management and Information) Bill.The notion of the word “returning” implies a distinct connection between the individual whom this bill covers and their connection to New Zealand and I think this comes to the heart of one of the debates one of the issues that my colleague Kelvin Davis has been battling for many many weeks now. That is the notion that yes we are happy as a Labour Party to support a bill that monitors offenders who are legitimately being returned to New Zealand as New Zealand citizens. They are for all intents and purposes New Zealanders. They were born here they have connection here they have whānau here—they are New Zealanders.We are happy to support the monitoring of those individuals for offences that they have committed overseas and for their legitimate return to New Zealand. We do the same to other countries—let us be clear. If we have someone who has come into New Zealand and committed a crime we will try them in New Zealand we will have them serve their time in New Zealand and then we will deport them to the place from which they have originally come where they reside—the place where their citizenship exists and lies.But we must be absolutely clear that at this stage this bill is covering more than those people. This bill will also be covering individuals who by Australia’s determination are not Australians and we refute that at the moment the place where it has chosen to draw that line is fair. If you said to any individual “Is it fair that a person who was moved to a country like Australia when they were a baby has been raised in that country has worked their entire life in that country has married a person from that country has had children who were then raised in that country”—is it fair to determine that because their first 7 months of life were spent in New Zealand they are a New Zealand citizen when they do not even identify themselves in that way? Our law books may define them in that manner but if that individual does not even define themselves in that manner is that fair?Secondly where does the threshold sit for when you can therefore define that that person should be deported? We know that—we have had lots of discussion in this House as to whether or not it has been fair or not to say to the Government that it should have moved more quickly. We maintain absolutely that it should have because the difference between the last 12 months and say the last 10 years is that last year the Australians changed their law. They changed their immigration Act which allowed them to move the threshold for deportation. It is usually up here—a bar around the types of offences you had to commit before you were deported. They moved the bar so low that we now have people with very very very minor offending in the category for which they will be deported. On top of that—minor offending—there is also the fact that these people do not even see themselves as New Zealanders.So that is why I think that the title of this bill which is a title that talks about returning; the act of coming home—for some of these offenders that will be true. They will have whānau here they will have community here they will for all intents and purposes be New Zealanders. But for a large chunk of individuals they are not returning home. They are being moved to an entirely new country and that makes the job for New Zealand that much more difficult because the key to reintegrating an offender is their connection to community their connection to a place to reside their ability to work and so on. So I dispute the use of the word “Returning” in the title and I would argue that “Overseas Offenders (Management and Information) Bill” would be a better reference.On to the commencement clause—this has actually become a cornerstone of the debate in this Committee. Yes we have said from the beginning that we agree with the need for this provision—this Act—to come in rapidly and as this commencement clause states it provides that the bill “comes into force on the day on which it receives the Royal assent.” For those listening that basically means that as soon as we are done here debating it and the Queen’s representative in New Zealand gives it a signature it becomes law. It then is in force. So that will be pretty quickly—that is about as quick as we ever make anything law in New Zealand. There is a good reason we do things slowly usually—Jami-Lee Ross: Thanks for “Parliament 101”.JACINDA ARDERN: —and that is to get things right. That is to get things right. But the issue here—Hon Ruth Dyson: What was that grand contribution Jami-Lee?Jami-Lee Ross: I said thank you for the “Parliament 101”.JACINDA ARDERN: Jami-Lee Ross I am speaking under the assumption that there are people out there beyond this Chamber who are watching who might be interested in the way that we usually do things in this Parliament. Usually—usually—we would debate it first in this Chamber. Then we would send it to a select committee and a select committee would ask the public to come and give its views.That is not happening in this case. We are using a shortened period because the Government says we need this law to be in place very very quickly. We agree we need something in now. What we dispute is that we should have started this process a year ago. Had we started it a year ago we could have given the public a say on this piece of law. We could have made sure that we did not have errors in it—and we have identified a number of drafting errors through this debate.So what would we do as an alternative given that we are here at this crossroads right now? No. 1 we would keep this commencement clause and allow this legislation to start immediately. But at the same time we would have taken a duplicate of this bill and at the same time that we would have passed one into law we would have sent an exact copy of it to select committee for it to be reviewed properly—for it to be scrutinised properly. Then we would have made sure that this version expired after a year and the version of this bill that had had proper consideration would then replace it. We proposed that to the Minister of Justice. We thought it was a really elegant solution but unfortunately that has been declined.What is our next option? Our next option is to look at when we review this piece of legislation. I absolutely accept the intent of the Minister when she set out that she wanted the bill to be reviewed after 2 years. She did not want it overlapping with the election period; she wanted it to be clear of that for us to give proper consideration. I absolutely accept her rationale. Our view is that that is therefore an argument to make it even earlier. Give it a year. In 12 months’ time in next December let us kick off a select committee review with urgency. Make it over the same time period that you would usually receive submissions on a bill so nice and tight. Receive submissions collect your data and evidence review the operation of the legislation—we could have it all done and dusted back in Parliament by say March the following year well within any election period.So 12 months we would say would be the optimum but if the Government does not want to go with 12 months then we would also support 18 months. Generally we want a shorter time period for review so we will be supporting both of the Green Party’s amendments which would bring that review period earlier than the 2 years that have been stipulated. On this I would acknowledge the Minister’s absolute goodwill in engaging with other parties in trying to set an appropriate time line for review but I see no argument against 12 months.At the moment we are receiving 25 offenders on average—and that is increasing—per month. We will have had hundreds inevitably based on the statistics we are seeing coming out of Australia by the time we come to review this in 12 months. We will know how it is operating. In fact I would wager that if one case hits the headlines—if one monitoring case goes wrong and hits the headlines—we will be reviewing this legislation straight away. So why not make it 12 months? Labour will be supporting those amendments. I encourage the Committee to make the review period 12 months. In lieu of that I encourage it to make it 18 months. Either way we have got to do something to make sure that this legislation is operating properly because it has been rushed.KELVIN DAVIS (Labour—Te Tai Tokerau): Talking to clause 1 the title clause I pick up on a number of points that previous speakers have made. The title will be the “Returning Offenders (Management and Information) Act 2015” but Jacinda Ardern has made the perfect argument that many of these people are not returning New Zealanders. Let me give you an example. When I was on Christmas Island and visited the 8 detainees one of them was a young man by the name of Ronald Neilson. He looked and he sounded Australian and let me tell you: the reason he looked and sounded Australian is because he was born in Australia—he was born there.Paul Foster-Bell: How does one look Australian?KELVIN DAVIS: “How does one”—obviously the member there has not been to Christmas Island has not spoken to these people and absolutely does not know what I know about their situation. It is fine for him to sit over there in his seat spouting off but he does not actually understand the human side of this whole situation and he does not care.The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Order!KELVIN DAVIS: Let me explain. This man is Australian. He was born there and yet this bill that that member’s party has written talks about returning offenders. Well he is not returning anywhere. He is being deported from his homeland. That is the point that the member needs to look at.Then we talked about the offenders. We have got Kō Rūtene who has not committed any offence in New Zealand or Australia. The Minister of Justice said last night that he is not going to be subject to this legislation if he gets deported back to New Zealand. There will not be somebody at the airport waiting to ask him for his identifying particulars and that to ask for his identifying information and that is good but he is also not going to be eligible for the $200 in his back pocket or 5 nights in a motel while he is trying to get himself on his feet.I also raise that case about Kō Rūtene because there are going to be more and more New Zealanders—or more and more Australian New Zealanders—who are going to be deported. I do not know if anyone has heard about the ill-fated Operation Fortitude which was set up in Melbourne in late October where the Australian authorities—The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Order! [Interruption] Order! The member will sit. We are on the title and commencement clauses. You have had more than half your speech so far in summing up which you are allowed to do. It is a peroration; that is fine. I would now like to hear something on the title and commencement.KELVIN DAVIS: Thank you Mr Chair but I am talking about people who are going to be deported under this bill who are said to be offenders yet they have not offended. Operation Fortitude an ill-fated police and Australian Border Force operation in Australia—it is going to end up that more people are going to be deported as offenders. Then we have the word “management”. Well this is mismanagement because these people’s situations will not be managed other than a couple of hundred dollars in the back pocket 5 nights in a motel and then nothing. There is going to be no support for them beyond that. What they are going to do is the question.The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Tie it back to the title and commencement. Tie it back to the title and commencement.KELVIN DAVIS: I am talking about the management of these people.The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Tie it back to the title and commencement. Tie it back.KELVIN DAVIS: It is. I am talking about the word “management” which is in the title Mr Chair. These people are not going to be managed.The information that is then being collected—well it is scratchy information at best. One of the best examples of the information that is going to be collected from them is their address. When you have just got out of Christmas Island—sorry not you Mr Chair. When a person has just got off Christmas Island has just got out of a detention centre in Australia and is brought back here they will have no address. They have no address to return to. Let me tell you about another detainee who is coming back who has connections to the Bay of Plenty area. He was raised in New Zealand where he had a horrific childhood suffering all sorts of things. He witnessed his father murder his mother. His father committed suicide. He was sexually abused. He does not want to go back there to where he came from. He told me on the island that there is no way on earth he wants to go back to where he came from to his former address and possibly meet the people who have committed the abuses against him. So these people are not being managed. The information about them that is going to be collected such as their addresses is going to change because their lives are in a state of flux. We need to be cognisant of that whole situation around it. The title “Returning Offenders (Management and Information) Act 2015” will not I believe really represent the full picture. It does not represent—CHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka): I am happy to take a call on the title and commencement clauses of the Returning Offenders (Management and Information) Bill. I want to begin by talking about the commencement clause first. The commencement clause in this bill is a very simple one. It means that the bill comes into force on the day on which it receives the Royal assent which is likely to be at some point in the next two or three days. The issues that I want to raise—because we have not had an opportunity to discuss this because of the urgent nature in which this is being put through—is why this bill does not also have a sunset clause why this bill is simply coming into force and never expiring.The proposal that the Opposition put to the Government was that we would support the bill—and we are supporting the bill through—with an addition of a sunset clause under clause 2 the commencement clause and a first reading of an identical bill that was then referred to a select committee for consideration. That would mean that the immediate provisions come into force straight away—or pretty much straight away; as I said once the Royal assent is received in the next day or two. But because there would be a sunset clause in here the whole bill would expire after a certain period of time once a new bill had been passed to replace it. The same bill could then go through the select committee process which would allow a lot of the questions that have been debated in the House to be properly addressed and properly answered. That is not going to happen because of the nature of the urgency.Sometimes legislation is urgent and in this case with people coming back to New Zealand—or coming to New Zealand I should say—in short order there is a need for some transitional measures. Therefore there is justification for this bill to come into force straight away—Jacqui Dean: What about the victims?CHRIS HIPKINS: Well I am just saying—Jacqui Dean is asking me: “What about the victims?”. That is why I am suggesting that this bill should come into force straight away but I am saying that the victims may also have a desire to have a say on this. Why should they be denied the opportunity to have a say on this legislation? Actually sending it to a select committee does give the victims the opportunity to have a say.It means that we could put the bill into force immediately. That means that there would be no increased risk but it means that all those affected could actually thoroughly examine the bill and have a contribution to the process. Therefore I think it is disappointing that the Government has not put a sunset clause into this legislation. I actually think having sat through and participated in many many urgency debates that most legislation that goes through under urgency should have a sunset clause with a more considered deliberative process to ensure that there is a long-term solution in place because there are very few bills that I have seen progress through the House that cannot be improved through a select committee process.We then come to the title clause clause 1 of the bill: “This Act is the Returning Offenders (Management and Information) Act 2015.” The first thing I want to highlight is that these are not necessarily returning offenders. First of all they potentially never did any offending in New Zealand so they are not returning to the point at which their offending took place. They are being deported from a country where their offending took place and they would not necessarily regard themselves as returning to New Zealand because some of them will not regard New Zealand as home. They would regard Australia or another country as home.There is a fairness aspect here that needs to be considered. When we talk about people returning to New Zealand let us put the facts on the table. In many cases they will have left New Zealand when they were very young. The fact that they were born in New Zealand is one consideration; they could have left as babies having been born in New Zealand and lived their entire life somewhere else. They could have been educated somewhere else. Their families could all be based somewhere else. Their entire relationship structure could be based somewhere else. They would potentially have been contributing taxes somewhere else and now having gotten themselves into trouble at some point—again in some cases quite minor offences could be resulting in people coming here—they find themselves deemed to be returning to New Zealand a country that in many cases could be as foreign to them as any other place on the planet. So using the words “Returning Offenders” in the title of this bill potentially gives I think the wrong impression.Using the phrase “offenders” again also potentially gives the wrong impression because are they still offenders? They have previously been offenders. What if they have served their time and they have been released? They have done their time; they may no longer be offenders. They may have done everything required of them to turn over a new leaf. Why should they be regarded as offenders?SUE MORONEY (Labour): What a shambles. What a shambles this bill is. I am going to start by talking about the commencement date to start off with because I think that that is the part that shows what a complete shambles the Government has made of dealing with this issue. The commencement date for this bill should have been about this time last year quite frankly because that is when the Government says that it was informed by the Australian Government that it was making the law change that was going to bring these supposed returning offenders back onto our shores. Yet they were being brought here and have been for almost 12 months now without any supervision without any of this so-called management and information that this bill puts in place.I want to share a story about how this bill is too late because the commencement clause should have been a lot earlier than this. I know that because in about August this year I went and visited People at Risk Solutions in Hamilton. That is the service that used to provide rehabilitation services for prisoners when they leave prison here in New Zealand. I say that they used to provide that because in fact that organisation has declined to take up the Government’s new contract in that area because it is so appalled at what the Government is requiring in terms of that contract. But I will come back to that point a little later on.The Hamilton People at Risk Solutions told me in August that it had had a number of these people who had been deported from Australia to New Zealand just cold calling it rocking up to its doorstep and telling it that they had arrived. They had been deported back they had no family they had no support services and they were knocking on the door of the People at Risk Solutions organisation in Hamilton saying: “Please help us.”The reason they were doing that was that they had been told by the Australian authorities that the People at Risk Solutions service in New Zealand would help them. That is what they were told when they were forced to leave the Australian shores. “Go and see the PARS service.” the Australian authorities said. “They will help you.” Well the Hamilton People at Risk Solutions service did help those people because it felt so sorry for them—they were in desperate need of support—but it had no funding to do that. It had no prior notice that it was going to be required to do that.This is a service that is struggling to survive because of the bad contracting regime that this Government has put in place for prisoners coming out of New Zealand services. It would not sign up to that contract. Here it was a service that had shed staff very recently because it was principled enough to not sign the dodgy contract that the Government had put in front of it to continue to provide that service for people leaving New Zealand prisons. Here it was having to struggle to provide that service for these so-called returning offenders whom it knew nothing about. There had been nothing put in place for the management of those people and they have been coming back to New Zealand since the beginning of this year Minister Adams. What were you doing? What were you doing all of that time?Hon Member: What was she doing?SUE MORONEY: I am sorry. To the Minister I ask what was the Minister doing all of that time while those people were returning in ones and twos and threes and fours to New Zealand’s shores without any support mechanisms in place and without the forethought of the New Zealand Government to do anything for their plight?That is not only a problem for those people in that situation but that is a problem for New Zealand society. We know that people have been in these dreadful situations where they have been deported. They have been in the sorts of conditions that Kelvin Davis witnessed over in Christmas Island. They have served their time. They have then been thrown into detention centres without any certainty about how long they were going to be there. What I have heard as Labour’s immigration spokesperson is that many of these people found the conditions in these detention centres particularly on Christmas Island to be more dangerous than—The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Come back to the bill.SUE MORONEY: —what they had been seeing in prison so they felt less safe. The reason why I raised that is that it is directly related to the commencement clause. These people were not getting the support from the New Zealand Government when they arrived in New Zealand and yet they had been in these very dangerous situations—traumatised arriving on our shores without any help. I am going to divulge—Hon RUTH DYSON (Labour—Port Hills): There will be plenty of opportunity I am sure for my colleague Sue Moroney to take another call to finish off that contribution. Mr Chairman it will be a relief to you I am sure that I want to speak to clauses 1 and 2 on the title and commencement.I want to begin with a contribution on the title clause. An earlier contribution described the title of the bill Returning Offenders (Management and Information) Bill as a misnomer and I think that is an entirely appropriate reference. The bill’s title is wrong it is misleading and it is totally inadequate to describe the purpose of this bill. And I have to say that I think all members in this House would agree with the purpose of the bill; it is to make sure that New Zealanders are protected. People who are convicted of offences overseas and come back to New Zealand deserve to have a level of security around them that other New Zealanders have if they commit comparable crimes and serve sentences in New Zealand.I was reminded earlier today at the White Ribbon breakfast of how important it is for relationships to be open and respectful. I would recommend to Parliament that we reflect—and a number of members were at that breakfast this morning—on some of the contributions that are made as this bill proceeds because as is obvious in clause 2 on the commencement date this bill is going through an unusual process.We are not having the usual process of a bill being introduced by a Minister clearly outlining the point of why are we having the bill introduced to Parliament. It then usually gets referred to a select committee where people with expertise in the area or people who just care a lot about it can make a contribution and can add to the thoughts of Parliament. We then come back and go through a considered debate in detail. But we have not had that opportunity because as clause 2 outlines this bill having been introduced only yesterday has gone through the entire process until 10 o’clock last night starting again at 9 o’clock this morning and it will go through until midnight tonight without the opportunity for that rigour.The Labour Party proposed a parallel processto the Minister of Justice. We have heard that this bill needed to be introduced under urgency because we have got a boatload of so-called—as described in the title of this bill—returning offenders coming to New Zealand this week. So we had to do this bill under urgency. Why was work on this legislation not commenced last December when everyone in Australasia knew that the Australian law had changed and that offenders were going to be treated differently in terms of them having to be returned to their country? I will ask the Minister again: what happened between December 2014 and November 2015 when we suddenly have a bill—which has taken only 10 days to write—introduced and passed through all stages under urgency when everyone in Australasia knew that the Australian Government had changed the law in December 2014?Then in February of this year when the then Prime Minister of Australia met with the current Prime Minister of New Zealand at the cricket did they not discuss the implications of this significant law change on New Zealand? And if they did did the Prime Minister just forget to pass on that critical bit of information to the Minister of Justice?There is no explanation as to why this bill has been introduced under urgency and rushed through and why under clause 2 we are going to see the Act coming into force the day on which it receives the Royal assent. We have had a year. We are rushing through legislation. We know what happens when legislation is rushed. It is always wrong and critical questions from members of Parliament—none from the National Party because none of them has made a contribution—are still unanswered.So just to go back to the title clause 1 of this bill—“Returning” is one of the biggest misnomers. We have heard over recent weeks tragic stories of people who went to Australia as children. They have no connection with New Zealand other than in theory and have been raised made friends made contacts have worked and have contributed in Australia as though that was their place of birth—but in clause 1 they are described as returning. Many of those people do not see themselves—PAUL FOSTER-BELL (National): I move That the question be now put.The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): I am going to hear the Hon David Cunliffe.Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE (Labour—New Lynn): I appreciate the opportunity—in fact it is my first opportunity—to offer my support to this bill and to reiterate that of the Labour Party. I want to use this title and commencement opportunity which is by convention an opportunity to sum up some of the arguments that have been raised during the course of the bill in the Committee stage in particular to reiterate firstly—Tim Macindoe: No it’s an opportunity to talk about the title and commencement.Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE: —in relation to the title; thank you Mr Whip—firstly Labour’s support for the bill because our priority is and always has been to keep New Zealanders safe. It is important when we have prisoners returning to New Zealand that they are both monitored for safety and rehabilitated into society. I think it was Tony Blair who said—and it is not that I agree with everything he has ever said; certainly some things I do not but I like the line where he said that it is important to be tough on crime and tough on the causes of crime. We must ensure that this bill addresses both of those dimensionsin its implementation. That is why Labour lent its support to extended supervision orders and why we have consistently pushed for the Government to establish an information-sharing regime with Australia in relation to deported offenders. However we have had some concerns with this bill.I see the Minister in the chair the Hon Amy Adams—like my colleague Ruth Dyson we were both at the White Ribbon breakfast—and I need to acknowledge the Minister. I thought she spoke very well on that occasion. I am not sure that the Minister’s timing has been as good with this bill. We have known about this issue for months—close to a year. We are here 2 days before the first planeloads of ex-Christmas Island detainees are due to touch down and we are passing this through Parliamentunder urgency through all stages denying the public their normal opportunity to have input through the select committee process. The question has to be asked—and the Minister may care to address it because we ask the question respectfully—why we have got ourselves into this situation. It is certainly not because Labour or other Opposition parties have been stalling it because we are supporting the legislation overall. I think the public deserves an explanation as to the timing and process.Secondly in relation to the management and information aspects of the bill which are contained in the title the management requires as I have said both the tracking and public assurance function and also the rehabilitation function. As the Committee has discussed this bill through the Committee stage and we have worked through it clause by clause and as my colleague Kelvin Davis has repeatedly said there ain’t much here about rehabilitation. And it is very practical stuff. When someone who has not lived in New Zealand since they were 2 or 3 years old—and that was 30 years ago—gets off a plane and they have no family here they have no friends here they have no job here and they have no money because they have been in prison in say Australia or they have been in detention and they get off the plane and they have whatever it is the $100 that they get started with and a voucher for a motel for 5 days what then?The answer is there is sweet nothing for them beyond that. The likelihood is that the lowest common denominator will emerge and people may be taken up by gangs or other environments that are not going to be conducive to the public interest. It is so much cheaper and so much better to put the fence at the top of the cliff rather than the ambulance at the bottom—to keep people out of bad company by supporting their integration back into society. So in the title of this bill “Management and Information” we just wish there was a bit more management to go alongside the information.The third thing we want to raise is that the part of the regime for the most serious offenders has to be triggered by the Department of Corrections—again a management and information issue. The problem with that is that the department has been rumpy—that would be the best description. The Minister of Corrections has been on termination watch over his management of the Serco circus. We have had fight clubs we have had violence we have had drug use and we have had all sorts of carry on in the privatised prisons. It has been very much—The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Order! That is not part of this.Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE: —the same as the sort of things that have been shocking the public about Christmas Island.The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): No—that is not part of this.Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE: So the management of corrections has been wanting and we want to make sure that the management of returning offenders under this bill—STUART NASH (Labour—Napier): I think a good name for this bill would actually be the “Closing the Gate After the Horse has Bolted Bill”. Let me read a quote. It says: “The Government is looking into a monitoring scheme for serious offenders deported to New Zealand.” Is that a quote that came from the Minister of Justice that we have heard in the debate in the last couple of days? No. That is a quote dated 25 January 2015. Minister your Government has been well aware of this all year—for longer than this—and yet you tell us that a bill has been drafted in the last 10 days. This is an issue that has been on the table. That quote is from the press. That quote is not from a select committee paper or from some sort of article that we got out of the Official Information Act. That was in the press. This is a bill that should not be here under urgency because it should have been passed by this House about 6 months ago when we realised there was a real problem here.If we have a look at this bill and the words that make up the title which is what we are debating the first one is “Returning”. If you look at the Oxford Dictionary which is used as the legal benchmark for the definition of language it says the meaning is to come or go back to a place. As Kelvin Davis has alluded to there are some people who are actually being deported back to New Zealand whence they had never come. There is no provision in this bill to send an offender back to the city that their family might have come from or where their support networks might be located if in fact they have any support networks. As we have heard they get $300 in their back pocket when they land in New Zealand. If their family is from Invercargill from Napier or from anywhere else in the country they have zero ability to even get back to a place where they may have an opportunity to start a new life where they just might have an opportunity to become a productive citizen. There is no provision for that whatsoever.Let us go to the next word “Offenders”. I think in the 21st century one of the basic tenets of our democracy is that you give people a second chance. If they have made a mistake that means they end up in jail they have done their time once they leave that jail. It does not matter what the mistake was or how bad it was or what previous life they led—if they have served their time then they deserve a second chance. They are not offenders once they are out of jail. That is a misnomer. I think it denies these people the ability for a second chance where their support networks are where their families are and where they have built a life.Let us have a look at the next word and that is “Management”. When you look at the dictionary definition of “management” as well it normally has a proactive connotation. It is about a way forward. This bill provides no way forward for any of these offenders or these Kiwis—or Australians—returning back to New Zealand. We have not heard how they are going to be managed—that will allow them to transition from the life they came from from the detention centres they were in from the jails where they spent time back to being productive members of society. That must be the ultimate gain for any community: to make sure that people have a second chance and that we put the processes in place and the management in place that allow them to once again have the opportunity to become productive citizens.And then we go to the next word—let us forget “and”—which is “Information”. What is this information going to be collected for? The Minister has provided no indication whatsoever of how this information is going to be used in a proactive way to once again allow these people to get on their feet and become productive members of society which is what we need to do. So this is not the Returning Offenders (Management and Information) Bill. It should be the “Government Mismanagement and Non-Information Bill”. What this is dealing with is one point in time: a specific point in time when a person from Australia who has done their time lands in New Zealand. That is that. It does not deal with the situation that then arises for our communities and for the person who has returned to New Zealand. It does not tell us how or what the community is going to provide for these people that will allow them to become productive citizens. It does not provide us with any opportunity for what that person themselves is going to be responsible for or how they are going to be given any sort of management plan to allow them to integrate.JONO NAYLOR (National): I move That the question be now put.A party vote was called for on the question That the question be now put.Ayes 63New Zealand National 59; Māori Party 2; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.Noes 58New Zealand Labour 32; Green Party 14; New Zealand First 12.Motion agreed to.Clause 1 agreed to.Clause 2 agreed to.Bill reported with amendment.Report adopted.Third ReadingHon AMY ADAMS (Minister of Justice): I move That the Returning Offenders (Management and Information) Bill be now read a third time. We have heard a lot about this legislation from yesterday afternoon and through today but what I want to just come back to is the situation we are dealing with. We have heard a lot from the Opposition that I think paints a reasonably misleading picture of how we have got here. But here is where we are. At the beginning of this year we were in a situation where for many many years serious offenders returned to New Zealand without any sort of supervision or oversight. I accept that as Australia changed its law at the end of last year which took effect at the beginning of this year those numbers have increased. But the fact is that serious offenders—murderers rapists child sex offenders drug offenders violent offenders the full category—have been coming back to New Zealand for many many years without oversight without supervision. I first became aware of this issue and got advice from my officials on 11 February. I immediately instructed them that I thought New Zealand needed a regime to supervise these offenders and the work has been moving since that time.Suggestions that somehow the writing of the bill is when the work is done represents a fundamental misunderstanding of the process. For those who have not been Ministers and who have not been in this House I can tell you that in the work of putting together a new regime the drafting is the very last piece. You have to start with understanding the implications on the agencies how you are going to resource it what the right balance is between the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act issues and safety and security issues and to do that you have to know and understand the quantum and the nature of the people being returned. So I have said from the outset that we have to have this in place. Let us get work under way to build it. But in the meantime we must conclude better information-sharing with Australia to make it work.I got the issue put on the Prime Minister’s agenda at the end of February to raise it right up the agenda. That led to finally concluding the information-sharing agreement with Australia. I always maintained that that had to be in place before we could finalise this so that we could assess the impact on the Department of Corrections and so I could stand and say quite confidently that we understand the resources required for the Department of Corrections and for the police we know the cost and we have resourced it. I can say to this House that we have done that work. We have spent the time getting the police the Department of Corrections the Ministry of Justice the courts and their Australian counterparts lined up knowing what we need and how it is going to work. This suggestion that you just rock up to the parliamentary drafters one day and say “Write me a bill that says something.” and the rest of the time is just fluff frankly is absurd; it is absolutely absurd. This piece of work has been going at pace since it was first raised with me.That is more than the Labour Party members can say. Labour had offenders—serious offenders—coming into this country all the way through its time in office and it did not do a thing. Frankly I have been talking about this and putting out releases about the programme of work on this throughout this year and not once—not once—would Labour members be able to point to a single statement a single question from them saying “Where is it? What’s happening?” or calling for it. The only person speaking this year about this issue and about the need to do it has been me. I have worked on it. I have delivered at pace but I have made sure we have got a regime that is fair to offenders that balances their rights properly that does not create a double jeopardy but still provides the monitoring and assistance that I think New Zealanders need.So now 9 months later when this debate concludes we will have a regime in place for the first time that supervises these offenders. I am very proud of that. I know that New Zealanders have been at risk from serious offenders in our communities without supervision until now and that is what we are moving to address. Can I also just address the fact that somehow this is a knee-jerk reaction to the arrival that we are expecting later this week. I can tell members in this House that if they follow the announcements I have made which frankly they showed no interest in until they saw a chance to have a bit of whack they will see that I have been making announcements that this bill was progressing at pace it would be in the House this week and would be progressed as fast as possible. The impending arrival of the offenders came after all of those announcements.So what we now have is the conclusion of three pieces of work that I set up when the issue was raised with me in February. There will be a register to track and monitor these offenders that all of our law enforcement agencies can access. It will be a single point of information no matter where they are in the country sharing that information. That is in place—check. There will be an information-sharing agreement with Australia so that when these people come back we have good advice on their psychiatric state their criminal risk their behaviour in prison their known affiliations their criminal histories—anything we need to make a proper risk assessment and to apply to the courts for whatever additional orders might be required. Having a regime in place where you can apply to the courts for orders without that information would simply have been a piece of paper. You have to have the information. We have it. We now have the regime to go alongside it.This regime is about putting in place the same sort of oversight that offenders would have expected had they been released from a New Zealand prison. No supervision regime will ever remove the risk. We are dealing with serious offenders some of whom will reoffend as offenders who are released from New Zealand jails reoffend. But what we can now be comfortable with and confident in thanks to this bill is the knowledge that the offenders who come back to New Zealand who have only just been released from prison—not people who have offended long ago; but the ones who have only just been released from prison—will be subject to the same sort of oversight regardless of whether they have served that sentence in Australia in New Zealand or in some other country. I think that is appropriate. It would make no sense to have to serve parole if you stayed in Australia but not if you came back to New Zealand. So this bill fixes that gap.The last thing I want to make comment on is the Australian policy that this is all about. I said in my opening contribution that we are not responsible for Australian law. We do not like the way this policy operates. We do not agree with New Zealanders who went to Australia as very young children potentially being removed when they have no ties to New Zealand. We do not like New Zealanders being held in immigration detention centres. But what we are saying is that although we cannot change that we have absolutely expressed our concern at those policies at the highest levels. Mr Little is going to speak to Australian backbenchers. We spoke to the Prime Minister. We spoke to the Minister of Justice. We spoke to the immigration Minister. We continue to raise our concerns every single day—not every single day but every single time we get that opportunity. We do not like that Australian policy but at the same time these people will continue to return to New Zealand as they always have and now thanks to this National-led Government for the first time—the first time—we will be able to supervise them.Can I make just one final point which is that although the numbers will go up and have gone up since Australia changed its laws a large number of that increase are not returning offenders. They have been deported on bad character grounds. It is about 40 percent we understand. Furthermore the extra part of the increase where they are offenders is because the Australian policy is now picking up much lower-level offenders as we heard the Opposition members acknowledge. So when you are talking about that core of serious offenders many of them were always deported back to New Zealand. They continue to be deported back but now they will be supervised. They will be under probation. We will have the power to go to the court and get orders to protect the New Zealand public because that is our primary goal. I commend the bill to the House with great pleasure.JACINDA ARDERN (Labour): I want to begin my final contribution on this bill by acknowledging that the Minister of Justice has in the past week or maybe 2 weeks engaged with us as an Opposition party on the finer drafting details of this bill. I acknowledge that that has indeed happened. But I can tell you that it is a sure sign that something is being done at great pace with great haste and unfortunately without the scrutiny that good lawmaking deserves when you are being engaged with to that degree so late in the policy development. So yes I acknowledge that the Minister gave us a call and shared with us various iterations of the bill. But the fact that we were getting amendments on the morning this bill came to Parliament demonstrates part of the problem that we have with this process. When you rush law you unfortunately make bad law. You inevitably make mistakes.I want to debunk some of the myths that have been raised by Government members in defence of that process. They have said: “Look we did it in a rush because this was as fast as we could go. We could not have produced this legislation any more quickly than we have.” They have made all sorts of claims about Opposition members in the process. I want to debunk some of the myths that have been raised in the House. Myth No. 1—the statement that somehow we are not allowed to raise process points because deportation is not new. No one has ever said that this is a new issue. Of course we have had offenders deported back to New Zealand for many many years and from many many countries—legitimate citizens. In fact the Minister’s own notes—Hon Maggie Barry: 700 under Labour. Nothing done.JACINDA ARDERN: And no one has ever denied that Maggie Barry. No one has ever denied that.Hon Maggie Barry: No protections. So what did that member do about it?JACINDA ARDERN: Maggie Barry can I just quote from Minister Adams.Hon Maggie Barry: That member does nothing.JACINDA ARDERN: Do you want to listen for a moment? Do you want to listen?Hon Maggie Barry: Not really.Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! I am calling for order. If the Minister does not want to obey that then she can go somewhere else. I do not care.Hon Maggie Barry: Sure.Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: And she is carrying on doing that right now. Do not do that.JACINDA ARDERN: Thank you Mr Deputy Speaker. I think if the member is willing to listen I am perfectly happy to follow the facts as set out by the Minister. We have never disputed them. Yes in recent years as it states in the Cabinet paper approximately 60 to 100 offenders have been deported to New Zealand each year after serving a prison sentence in an overseas jurisdiction. No one on this side of the House ever denied that. However recent changes—the paper goes on to acknowledge—in Australia’s visa cancellation policy have resulted in a large increase in the number of offenders being removed or deported to New Zealand. Those numbers are then explained. The rate of deportations has increased from an average of five per month in previous years to 25 deportations per month since June 2015. So yes deportations have occurred before but not as we know it now—not as we know it now.So what about the claim then that was made by the Government that at least the Government is doing something? Well that is because it had it within its power. I am not just saying that because it has been in Government for 7 years—apparently we can still be blamed for errors of times gone past—but we are actually in a different environment. Not only has Australia changed its laws in the last year which means we have this rapid increase but we also have more information available to us. So I say to Minister Barry that when Labour was in Government we had no information-sharing regime. Australia was not giving us the information that we now have through an information-sharing agreement which was signed only in September and we now have the ability to put in a regime like this. In fact Amy Adams herself said that having a regime in place without this information would have been meaningless. So to somehow blame another Government for not having done something that the Minister herself claims would have been meaningless without that change in process I think means that those claims from that side of the House are totally unfair and unjustified.But the Minister has then made the argument that she has gone as fast as she could. Yes we are not naive; we know how legislation is drafted: you create a regime and then you give your instructions to the Parliamentary Counsel Office. The Parliamentary Counsel Office which literally writes the law for us was not told what to write until about 3 weeks ago. This law that we are debating here was drafted 3 weeks ago. Anyone who has read legislation knows that it is a complex job. If you do not have time and proper scrutiny things go wrong. This started 3 weeks ago. Did it have to be that way? No the Minister herself acknowledged that she knew that we had a problem—well if she read the paper she would have known—well over a year ago. The Australians said “Hey New Zealand we are changing our laws. You should know about that.” a year ago. The Minister claims that she has been working on it since then. Really? Really—it does not take year to give drafting instructions to the Parliamentary Counsel Office. In fact as far as I can tell some of the Cabinet papers on this—which are the first step in the process—that went to the Cabinet saying “This is what we should do.” happened well after August. We know there was at least 6 months when nothing appears to have been happening and in that time hundreds of offenders were being packed up and shipped out.So yes we have a problem with the time line for this bill—we have a problem with it. Our concern is that as a result we will have made bad law. What signs do we have that that might be the case? Well let us look at the way that the law is going to work. The law has set out that there will three sets of different kinds of offenders coming back into New Zealand—three types of returnees—and we would add that the first category are those who should not be deported back in the first place. As the Minister said we are not talking just about offenders who are being sent back to New Zealand; there is a character test that is the cause of about 40 percent of the people being deported back into New Zealand. They are failing a character test. These are people who believe themselves to be Australians who are being deported to New Zealand—a place they have no connection to—simply because they may have been born here or have New Zealand parents. On a character test they are being sent back. We think that is wrong and will continue to fight that. I acknowledge again the enormous amount of work that Kelvin Davis has done on that because our Prime Minister has not.The second group of people who are being deported here and are covered by this regime are what we call returning prisoners. Returning prisoners are those who are defined as having been released for having served a sentence for an offence that attracted a sentence of a year or more. They are being released and they have not spent 6 months out in the community. The rationale of the Minister is that if they have not spent 6 months out then we do not know whether they are able to reintegrate properly. So that group of deportees when they come back into New Zealand will be automatically be monitored—automatically. The point here is that you will notice that we are not focusing on the offence of the person being deported. It does not matter whether or not they have committed a highly violent crime or whether they have stolen something from the backseat of a car. That is not what New Zealand in this regime is paying attention to. It is simply whether or not they have been in the community for 6 months. That in itself has some issues attached to it.Then the next category of people are those who have been out in the community for 6 months before they have been picked up by officials and sent back to New Zealand. For that category of people to be monitored New Zealand’s Department of Corrections has to apply to a court. Those individuals could be murderers—and we know that some of them are. They could have been child sex offenders—and we know that some of them are. They will be covered by a regime only if the Department of Corrections goes through the courts. Our concern is that we have already since December 2014 had the ability to monitor serious offenders who are deported to New Zealand if the department asks for them to be. How many has it asked to be monitored in a year? Zero—not one. Thirty percent of people who have been deported back to New Zealand in the last 2 years are categorised as serious offenders. The Department of Corrections has applied for not one of them to be monitored. We are concerned that this bill is reliant on a department that is underfunded under-resourced and managed poorly at present and we are giving them an enormous job.In summary this bill has been rushed unnecessarily. It has not been given due consideration and yes although we agree that we need a regime we argue that we should have had another bill go through a full process to replace this one. It is disappointing that we are here in this House doing this at the last minute because New Zealanders’ safety is reliant on our doing a much better job than this.Hon Peseta SAM LOTU-IIGA (Minister of Corrections): I rise to voice my support for the Returning Offenders (Management and Information) Bill. What this bill does in principle is to empower the Department of Corrections to supervise returning offenders. They are offenders who will be managed under standard as well as special conditions consistent with those used to manage offenders who are released from New Zealand prisons—consistent with those offenders. As the Minister of Justice has already said this is a regime that is currently not in place. It is a regime that no other Government prior to this Government has seen fit to put in place.This bill is about providing conditions to manage the risks of those returning offenders in the interests of public safety and public security. Public safety and public security are the No. 1 goal here. We have heard members opposite talk about reintegration and rehabilitation and they are important but the primary goal is to ensure the public’s safety and security from those offenders who are returning. How does that happen? Well it happens through regular engagement by probation staff by agencies and by NGOs who are out there doing the mahi doing the work currently with offenders who are released from New Zealand prisons.It is about managing those people and making informed decisions. This bill sets in place a framework within which we can obtain information from the respective authorities in Australia. That includes the Federal Government but it also includes state Governments. State Governments oversee the imprisonment of Australian as well as New Zealand citizens who are in state correction facilities.Of course secondly it is about conditions that are used to facilitate the rehabilitation and the reintegration of offenders. Members opposite have talked about this but as I have already said safety comes first. Also what should be mentioned is that some of these returning offenders—quite a number of them—will be awaiting appeal. So whether or not it is appropriate to impose conditions in terms of rehabilitation and reintegration when some of these people will actually be returning to Australia needs to be determined within those conditions.Thirdly members opposite have talked about rehabilitation and reintegration not being in the primary legislation. Well it is not appropriate that they be in the primary legislation because the conditions to determine the safeguarding and the monitoring and the surveillance of these returned offenders will set out quite clearly on an individual level how those offenders will be managed.As has already been stated the Department of Corrections has been working alongside other agencies both justice and police all year to prepare for the return of this increased number of offenders from Australia. The Department of Corrections has helped manage and supervise these people as is envisaged by the bill. It is essential that we know who they are and what they have done and that we have some detailed information around their needs around the risks and around some of the challenges that will be in place in terms of monitoring these offenders once they return to these shores.That is why in July I went to Darwin and I signed a memorandum of cooperation alongside corrections Ministers from the various states. Ultimately some of that more detailed information in order to manage some of these offenders is going to be required from the states. That includes psychological reports and some of the assessments and the risk analysis and risk assessments that those states do in order to manage those offenders both within those corrections facilities in the states as well as upon release and the conditions upon which they are released into Australian society. This legislation is not to manage just Australian deported offenders; it is to manage deported offenders wherever they come from right around the world. We know that there are also risky offenders that come from other countries. This legislation will capture those people.In terms of rehabilitation and reintegration I can say to this House that the Department of Corrections is working alongside other agencies. It is working alongside NGOs like for example People at Risk Solutions which does a wonderful job in the community helping to rehabilitate and reintegrate offenders. A grant of $100000 was given to that society in order to help with the reintegration services for returning offenders. Of course that will not be the only cost. There will be many other costs and members across this House have noted the cost that will be incurred not just by the Department of Corrections but by other agencies in order to in the long term take care of and monitor these offenders.Of course the department will work alongside and in collaboration with some of these community providers as well as social service agencies local government and other Government agencies in order to support these offenders as they adjust to life in New Zealand. That is in the same way that the department will work closely with deported offenders to ensure that they have this support alongside domestic offenders.This bill has a twofold role. It is about holding offenders to account in terms of the conditions imposed and it is about safety and security for all New Zealanders. A mother of a victim came on Radio New Zealand National this morning and said it has the potential to save lives. It has the potential to save lives where monitoring of a high-risk offender will lead to a better outcome and avoid the risk to and the deaths of New Zealand citizens. I support this bill. It allows for fine work to be extended to offenders returning to New Zealand from overseas. It is in keeping with this Government’s track record of driving legislative change that strengthens our ability to keep the New Zealand public safe first and foremost as well as reintegrating and rehabilitating these offenders. That is why I commend this bill to the House.KELVIN DAVIS (Labour—Te Tai Tokerau): I have very few problems with what the intent of this legislation is—that is to collect information so that these deportees when they return to New Zealand can be monitored by the probation service by the parole services or by whoever needs to monitor them. That is not really the point. We have objections around the time it has taken to get this bill to the House and the shoddy drafting of the legislation.Let me give you an example. On 25 January in the Northern Advocate which is not exactly the world’s most widely read newspaper there was a report about a woman who was deported from Australia. She had participated in a murder in Australia and was sentenced to a number of years in jail. She was deported back to Kaikohe. I will not name the woman because she has to get on with her life. But she is not going to be much of a problem to the Kaikohe community. Murderers do not tend to go on and murder over and over again except of course serial murderers I must admit. That woman is very little risk to the Kaikohe community.The point of the story is that in that newspaper report on 25 January the former Minister of Justice Judith Collins said that the deportation of prisoners was an issue that the Government was aware of and that needed to be changed. She then went on to say that the Government was looking into a monitoring scheme for serious offenders deported to New Zealand. That was in January. We had an admission by the former justice Minister the predecessor of our current justice Minister saying the Government was well aware of this issue and that it was looking into a monitoring system for serious offenders deported to New Zealand. And now 11 months later we are going through this whole process based on legislation that has taken 12 days to draft. There is something seriously wrong with the story that the country has been told in terms of the genesis of this legislation.The Minister who has just finished speaking Peseta Sam Lotu-Iiga talked about the primary goal being public safety. We have no problems with that but my question is: how does the bill protect public safety when we are deporting people from Australia and dumping them here in New Zealand with a couple of hundred dollars in their back pocket with vouchers for 5 days in a motel and then telling them they are on their own? How is it protecting public safety when they do not have the support systems around them? They do not have their family networks around them—they are back in Australia—and they do not have legal representation here in New Zealand because their lawyer is back in Australia. How is New Zealand going to be a safer place if they do not have their support systems and do not have the proper networks and social services wrapping around them to the extent they should?The Prime Minister stands up and says he is the only person who is speaking for victims in New Zealand. That is rubbish. If these guys are not supported to the extent they should be what the Prime Minister is going to do with this regime is create more victims here in New Zealand and that is what we are trying to prevent at all costs. That is why we say that this legislation although it is good to look at the information-gathering side of things and all that is missing something in the fact that there is little mention of the support services that need to be wrapped around these guys. Once their 5-day motel voucher has run out where do they stay? What is going to be put in place for them? That is why I suggested some 5 or 6 weeks ago that the Government should fund a marae—and let us face it; many of these people are Māori—to look after these people to cater for them to accommodate them for 4 or 5 weeks while services can come in and provide some comprehensive wraparound get them on their feet and help them to get a job and an IRD number and all those sorts of things that they probably do not have.As I said in the Committee stage many of these people have no connection to New Zealand. One person I met on Christmas Island a young man by the name of Ronald Neilson was born in Australia. He has no connection to New Zealand. He said to me: “If they are going to deport me deport me to Bali.” He knows more about Bali than he does about New Zealand. Despite the fact that his parents were born here he has no connection.The Minister has made out like she is the only person running around doing things and that the Government has set up this information sharing about criminal risk. That is great. All this information sharing is fine but the information that the Australian Government has not shared with us is the number of people who are on the plane that is meant to be arriving tomorrow where that plane is going to land or what the names of those people are—the most basic things. It has not shared that information with us. So it is fine for the Minister to get on her high horse and start talking about the great system they have set up for sharing information but when it comes to what is happening on the ground and what is going to happen to tomorrow with the arrival of a planeload of deportees they have not shared the most basic bits of information.So how do we support these people? We do not know who they are. We do not know their criminal record. We do not know where they are going to go. I wonder whether those people know which motel they are going to be put up in. None of these questions have been answered. That means these people are bound to be dumped on our streets and if they do not have the support systems that they require and they run out of food and they run out of clothes and they are cold at night and they have no money chances are they are going to have to resort to crime to get by. They are being set up to fail. All the monitoring in the world by the probation service does not put food in someone’s stomach does not get them money and does not give them a job. These are the issues that we have concerns about.Some of these people have not even committed crimes in Australia; they are being deported because they fail a character test. And let me tell you about something that I believe is extremely frightening and that is an operation by the Australian authorities its Border Force—that is the immigration people and the police. It is Operation Fortitude. Just google it. It is an operation that was meant to go ahead in October of this year where the Australian Police and the Australian Border Force were going to randomly check people’s visas on the streets of Melbourne. So basically they were going to be racially profiling or profiling people and checking their visas. If their visas were not up to scratch then they could have been detained and deported. And those people could well have ended up here in New Zealand for nothing more than just not having their visas up to scratch or completing that process properly.That means we could have more people uplifted from their homes in Australia from their families and from their support networks and landed here on New Zealand soil where we actually have to look after them and where we have to re-establish them. And of course as I have said if we do not do that properly these people will be set up to fail and they have not committed a crime. They will be set up to fail. Does that mean that they have to commit crimes to get by? Does that mean we create more victims in New Zealand?I just want to finish telling the story and I have told it already during the course of this debate about a young guy Beau Adams whose entry into the Australian criminal system was on dubious grounds to start with. He had a domestic violence order put against him. The person who put that domestic violence order against him then texted him phoned him insisted that he drive her somewhere they argued she claimed that he broke the domestic violence order and he was then imprisoned. And I do not even know that he went to court; he was definitely on remand. He was there for 159 days before he was eventually sent to Perth from the east coast where he lived and then on to Christmas Island. I am not even sure that that guy has been charged with a crime and he could possibly be sent back to New Zealand where he has not been since he was 4 years old.I know that Australia has the sovereign right to make the laws that it makes but its laws are wrong and we in New Zealand are the ones who are bearing the brunt of its poor laws. And if this does not work if this legislation that we are enacting now does not work then we are going to create more New Zealand victims. Kia ora.JACQUI DEAN (National—Waitaki): I will make only a brief contribution. I think many of the issues have been traversed. I just want to pick up on a point from the rather breathtaking speech that Kelvin Davis has just given to the House. He fears that under this legislation returning offenders will be “dumped on the streets”. Well the news is that this piece of legislation fills the gap and will take care of people so they are not dumped on the streets. That is exactly the point of this legislation.The point that I think is being missed by the Opposition is that this bill is about protecting New Zealand citizens. This bill captures those people—and I used that word advisedly—at the border where hitherto in particular under the previous Labour Government hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of serious offenders came across our border unremarked unknown about only caught by chance if they were caught and then were essentially free to go into New Zealand society to live adjacent to schools and adjacent to families with one child and that Government of the day did nothing. So spare me your hollow words across the House because this is the legislation that is plugging that gap and making New Zealanders safer in their own homes.I have sat through much of this debate listening to the Opposition saying that this Government is making bad law. Really? Is this Government making bad law? I did not hear a single argument about why. David Parker alerted us to a spelling mistake. Thank you very much. It may have been a point of grammar but I did not hear any cogent argument as to why members opposite were saying this was bad law because it is good law. What this law is doing is placing a new supervision regime which is very similar to that which is imposed on New Zealand - based offenders when they are released from prison when they go out in our society. Tell me what is bad about that. The thing is the Opposition essentially agrees with the position of this Government and that is where its objection to this bill has utterly failed. This is a good bill and it will do as it intends to do which is to make New Zealand safer for New Zealanders.METIRIA TUREI (Co-Leader—Green): I suspect that this debate has actually been at heart one of furious agreement—to be frank—about the need for legislation to manage the issues for those who have been deported from Australia and elsewhere who need some kind of monitoring for some reason or the recording of their details with the Police. The content of the bill reflects that comparatively well.I think the Government has made a mistake in not acknowledging its process failures as effectively as it should have. It would not be difficult to do to acknowledge that it could have done a better job of consulting other MPs from across the House. I would note that Amy Adams did say that she is the only one who has been working on this issue. Well my colleague David Clendon asked her for a meeting to talk about exactly this in July and was refused. So that is inaccurate and it is unfair in the sense that if this had been from the start a collaborative effort across the political spectrum and with some of the critical external agencies—like the Human Rights Commission the Law Commission and the Law Society—we would have got a better-quality piece of legislation.The Government has a tendency to keep its cards far too close to its chest and to not understand that there are real opportunities for cross-party engagement on these serious issues where we all agree. We all agree we need legislation to deal with the deportees. We all agree that the Australian legislation is disgraceful and is a breach of human rights; everybody thinks that what it is doing is wrong. So why not choose to work on those areas of common ground as opposed to this manufacturing of huge drama in the House over the detail—detail that could have been properly worked out with a decent process?It has been an interesting debate over the last 24 hours or so and as a result of the debate we have made changes to the legislation. My own conversations with Amy Adams led to a constraining of the information that is going to be required of returning offenders. I am pleased for that. I am pleased that she was seriously considering that at the time. The House has agreed to change the time frame for the review of the law from 2 years to 18 months. That at least gives us a chance of getting a review completed and all changes made before the next election. Again that is good.No doubt better changes could have been made with more time and with even a short select committee process by which we could have got some external analysis and external review of the legislation. That is what the Greens have asked for. Even a day’s worth of select committee would have been beneficial to find ways to improve the legislation. There is no Government department that knows everything and sometimes you need the practitioners—the people who will put this law into practice every day—to give us their analysis of it and how it will actually affect their work so we can make it the best possible legislation. Overall I think that is why the Greens are abstaining on this legislation. We understand the need for it. There is broad agreement on the basic purpose. But the details—the law itself—could have been much better if the process had been more collaborative. It is an example to the Government that it really needs to be rethinking its strategy on some of these big issues.I would say that the other area that is now left open and could benefit from a more collaborative approach from the Government is the rehabilitation for offenders. As the Government’s own paper on this bill the regulatory impact statement has said there is a critical connection between reducing the chance of recidivism—further offending—and the quality of the support that wraps around an offender. Those two things cannot be separated from each other. In this debate over this bill which is about the monitoring but not the rehabilitation there has been very little from the Government—the Minister or other Government MPs—about the importance of it about what they are going to do to increase services and how they are going to better engage with communities. Kelvin Davis suggested funding for marae to do this work. It is great idea. The fact is we know that agencies are already saying that they are well over their capacity to deal with returning offenders as we speak and are desperately looking for more support. Often some of those agencies are too afraid to speak out and to ask for more support because of their concerns about being punished politically.We now actually have this opportunity to set aside the politics around the issue and to have a cross-party working party or it is a chance to have a conversation directly with the relevant Ministers—including the Minister for Social Development and the Minister for Building and Housing as well as the Minister of Justice—to find out how we can best support the best possible support services and rehabilitation for those who are returning. If there is one way to stop reoffending it is making sure that offenders have genuine options for making a decent life for themselves when they get back here.We have heard a lot about—particularly from Kelvin Davis and I do want to acknowledge his efforts in debate in this House; I think he has made some amazing contributions about the stories of the people who will be affected by this bill. He is quite right that there are people coming who have absolutely nowhere to go when they arrive here. They know no one. There is nobody here for them. What can we possibly expect for them but the worst outcomes if we do not immediately put in place intervention when they arrive? Not a punitive intervention—one that respects their dignity gives them choices and provides them with the support they need to take the next steps to build a new life here.That is something that again we all agree on. We all agree that should happen we all agree how important it is and we all agree that it is critical for public safety so let us find a way of working together on this. The Government’s—I am not sure how to describe it—block about working with the Opposition means that it makes mistakes and it makes mistakes that those members do not suffer. It is not anybody on the Government benches who is going to—Chris Bishop: Listen to the Greens. Oh!METIRIA TUREI: This is an example of exactly what I am talking about. They are not listening to a contribution about how we can best work together; they are deciding to just shout. This is just a fact: they are not the ones who are going to be affected. It is the offenders—Chris Bishop: It does not actually mean collaborate; it means just do what you want.METIRIA TUREI: Here we go again. They are just shouting for no good reason. It is the offenders who will be affected. It is their victims who will be affected. So we need to make sure that when we are making law about other people we recognise how far away we are from those lived experiences and how little we know about what really happens and therefore make an additional commitment to those people who are directly affected that we will act in their best interests by putting aside the political arguments and shouting and actually work on what is the best and most decent policy for New Zealanders. That is why we are in this business; that is why we are in the Chamber. Let us see if we can improve on that after this example. Thank you.DENIS O’ROURKE (NZ First): New Zealand First still supports this bill warts and all but buying into it is a bit like buying a new car especially if the old one has died and a new one is needed immediately. What one gets one will be stuck with for a significant period in the future whether it is fit for one’s purposes or not. It would be good to have tested it properly before buying it and probably one should have studied it for a few months to see whether it would be fit for purpose but that luxury has long gone—and so it is with this bill. Clearly it should have been introduced months ago. The Minister of Justice said the process started in February—and for her yes I am sure it did but not for the rest of us. The rest of us have had just a few days to look at this bill to study it to see its ramifications and to debate it and that really is not good enough. That is not the usual process which we have a right to expect in this Parliament for this kind of important legislation.New Zealand First deeply regrets that it is necessary at this stage to pass such a bill under urgency. When you think about it it has been almost a year since the Australians passed their legislation and it has been 9 months since the process began in New Zealand to respond to that legislation. So in the end we get this rushed process to pass a bill under urgency when in fact much better could have been done and that rushed process shows in many of the errors and the inadequacies in the drafting of this bill.We in New Zealand First are quite happy to acknowledge that the fundamentals of the bill are perfectly OK. We are quite happy to ensure that offenders are identified on arrival in New Zealand and we are happy to ensure that prisoners returning to New Zealand comply with Parole Act conditions and any special conditions that may imposed by the courts. We have no difficulty with that but it is the detail of the bill that has caused concern. Those matters as we know are usually sorted out in the select committee process and that process is missing from this bill. The most important aspect of that is that the public has no opportunity whatsoever for any input into this bill and that is a very significant matter. I would have looked forward to hearing from organisations such as the Law Society and many others that have special expertise and could have contributed to a much better piece of legislation. We are not going to get that either and that really is a shame.The only saving grace is clause 37 which requires a review and report by the Justice and Electoral Committee after 2 years. The Minister’s amendment says now that it should be in an appropriate select committee after 18 months but not even that is long enough in the circumstances. There were always two better options.Firstly I think Labour’s parallel process option is the one that ought to have been adopted. That would require effectively two bills—one passed now and the other to go through the select committee process in the normal way with full public consultation and so on. That would have been the best of both worlds. We could have had legislation that comes into force this week—as this bill will—and yet have a select committee process to sort out all of the issues that there are with it. I think that the only reason the Government is not willing to do that is that to do so would mean that it would be admitting it had acted too late. That is the reason why this Government is not willing to adopt that very sensible dual process which the Labour Party proposed.The other option was a closer date for review than 18 months. When you think about it 18 months means May 2017 at the earliest. That is the time at which election issues are really starting to warm up leading up to the election campaign for later that year. Effectively it really means that the review would actually be in 2018. That is far too late. The opportunity to learn from experience after this bill is passed is in the first year. That really requires the review to start no later than 12 months from when this bill is passed this week. That is not being adopted and that also is a shame because to wait until 2018 for a complete review will mean that a lot of issues that will arise will go unfixed for far too long.This could have been done a lot better and New Zealand First deeply regrets that the Government has not taken on board those concerns expressed by many of the Opposition parties in Parliament. We already know of some of the areas needing review which could be—but will not be—amended right now. Indeed Minister Adams herself produced amendments within hours of the first reading of the bill so she herself knew that she was bringing to Parliament a bill that actually needed amendment from the very beginning. Opposition parties have offered amendments in good faith to try to help improve the bill. A few have been accepted but most have not been seriously considered and that also is a shame.There was not the opportunity for a select committee process which would have provided for much better amendments and review of the bill. Actually when you consider it this bill really could have been introduced by the Government at least say 6 weeks ago because it has had at least 9 months if not more to bring the bill to Parliament. If it had done so 6 weeks ago we could have had a shortened but worthwhile select committee process with public submissions and especially submissions by expert organisations and the result right now this week would be much better legislation.I want to acknowledge David Parker and Trevor Mallard in particular who raised drafting issues and issues of substance and placed them on the record. Those issues have not been dealt with and they ought to be. It should not be necessary to wait until 2018 effectively for those matters to be looked at again. David Parker in particular offered an amendment which I thought was well worthwhile to add words to clause 9 to add a requirement for offenders—as they are so called in the bill—to provide information about convictions and penalties. That information is obviously necessary. Why has it been left out? It would have been so simple to add those few words—completely harmless words completely worthwhile words—which would have added some important information. But the Government has refused to do it with some pretty weak excuses made by the Minister—excuses I would have to say that did not really make any sense. So the bill will now be passed without those words added and it will be the poorer for it.I raised a number of issues regarding clause 7 especially around the term “liable for deportation”. Those also have not been addressed. I raised issues about clause 10(2) concerning the period of detention. The Minister said case law could be relied on to define what a reasonable period is but why not specify a maximum reasonable period in the bill? That would have been better so the Minister’s response I think was completely inadequate on that. I and others have raised a whole raft of other issues—issues of substance issues of drafting—and all of those will now have to wait effectively until 2018 before anything can be done about them. Really that is not good enough for a process for legislation of this importance.Finally let me say this: New Zealand First has always supported the objects of this bill—the object of making sure that we are ready to accept a greatly increased load of offenders and returning prisoners especially those from Australia but also from other countries. We have always accepted the need for that. It is probably legislation that should have been done years ago so we have been happy to see this legislation come forward. We support it. What we do regret very deeply and protest about very strongly is that it has been so slow and that the opportunity for Opposition parties and indeed the public to have genuine and substantive input into this bill has been completely inadequate.JONO NAYLOR (National): Well it has been an interesting discussion over this last day and a half as we have been hearing things. Some of them actually have even related to the bill. It has been interesting and I guess disappointing from my perspective to have heard so much focus from a lot of people on Australian law when this House should be dealing with New Zealand law.I guess I would ask the question: is it the role of New Zealand to advocate for our citizens who are living abroad? Absolutely yes it is. And in dealing with that—and that is why I just want to commend the work that has been done by the Prime Minister and by Ministers Adams Woodhouse and Lotu-Iiga who have been dealing with their counterparts in Australia doing that work. But this bill is not about what happens in Australia; this bill is about what happens as a result of what is happening in Australia which is that there are people who are being deported from Australia who are New Zealand citizens. Yes maybe they do not have a lot of connection with New Zealand but although they have been in Australia for all that time unfortunately they have not become Australian citizens for reasons that only they can tell for themselves.One of the concerns that I have heard from members opposite—and I just want to reiterate that this is not the case. There is a lot of talk about those people who are being deported for issues of character. Those people are not caught up in this process. The bill is very clear in Part 2 in its description of who a “returning offender” is and who a “returning prisoner” is. Those people who are being deported for issues of character—I think we would all agree that that is not necessarily a great thing for Australia to be doing but they will not be picked up in this. So those people will not be victimised by this bill in the way that I think members opposite have been conveying and I think that is disappointing.This is a good bill. It is a bill designed to help keep New Zealanders safe. It is designed to ensure that those people who are returning after convictions in other countries will be treated in the same way that people who are being released from New Zealand prisons will be treated. I think it is only summed up really by the overwhelming support that it has had around this House. It is in fact a good bill and I look forward to seeing it enacted hopefully later on today or tomorrow.Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: This is a 5-minute call on behalf of the Green Party—David Clendon.DAVID CLENDON (Green): Some years ago Sir Geoffrey Palmer made the comment that this legislature this Parliament contains the fastest lawmakers in the West and unfortunately the experience of the last 24 hours or so demonstrates that I think we can still lay claim to that rather dubious distinction. In less than 21 hours by my count since this bill landed on the Table we have had about 8 to 8½ hours of debate on a very substantive matter. This is not a trivial piece of legislation. We agree that on occasion there is need for haste. There are occasions when urgency is necessary and important.We do not accept that this is a case of such compelling urgency that in a 10 or 11 - month process—by the Minister’s admission at least 10 or 11 months of work have gone into this. Could we not squeeze out 1 week when we could invite members of the public the community voluntary sector the legal fraternity and the judiciary to come and have an opinion about this bill? Even in the course of yesterday evening the Opposition parties were able to add value and to make this a better bill on the basis of very little information with very little time for analysis and that indicates how much better this bill could have been had even a very truncated select committee process been allowed.I particularly feel for the community voluntary sector. The success or failure of rehabilitating and reintegrating the people who do return to New Zealand once they have been registered supervised monitored etc.—a lot of the hard work of bringing those people back into our communities will be done by people in the community voluntary sector some of whom are partially Government funded but who to a large extent rely on voluntary time. They are people who give up their time their energy and their experience to try to bring people back into the fold. I think we should acknowledge that and I think it is somewhat disrespectful of this Parliament not to have included that community sector in the preparation of this policy which it will have a considerable part in implementing.I must take a moment to acknowledge PARS the Auckland-based group which was formerly the Prisoners Aid and Rehabilitation Society and now I think it has rebranded as People at Risk Solutions. At least since the beginning of this year it has been sending people to the airport to meet offenders who have been deported—to meet deportees—and to endeavour to assist them. Two middle-aged women women in the prime of life—or else there was one senior kaumātua who would go alone—would go out to the airport not really knowing what they were dealing with; knowing that they were meeting deportees who may have been confused or angry who may have had major alcohol and substance abuse problems. Out of that their courage is extraordinary—courage to actually put themselves personally at risk in order to go to the airport meet these people and bring them back and endeavour to get them at least a roof for the night and to link them in to whatever social services were available. They have been ignored and I think that is very very unfortunate and disrespectful of those people.I will not dwell on the fact that the Minister of Justice sort of indicated she has been carrying the burden alone for this year. Actually we put our hands up to be part of that. My colleague Metiria Turei made comment on that; I will not dwell on it.The Greens are not opposing this bill. We are absolutely opposing the process; we are not opposing the bill because we acknowledge there is a problem.Hon Craig Foss: Are you voting for it or against it?DAVID CLENDON: No listen carefully. We are not opposing this bill nor are we supporting it; we are abstaining for the simple reason—Hon Craig Foss: You’re paid to be in here to vote.DAVID CLENDON: We are voting. We are not opposing this bill because we understand there is a problem. We agree with the principle of aligning the treatment of returning offenders with what happens to people domestically. We understand the information-sharing issues. We think parole is a good thing. There was research put out earlier this year by Anne Opie indicating that longer periods on parole are an indicator of less reoffending and that is a good thing. So we have no problem with the principles of this bill.We could have supported it had it been a better bill and had we had a better process and it is unfortunate we have not seen that. We have heard reassurances that the support mechanisms will be put in place to ensure these people who are returned have some sort of a fighting chance of keeping out of trouble keeping out of the justice system—of not reoffending. We will be looking to see that. We will be looking hard to ensure that the organisations both Government and non-governmental organisations that actually do that work are being properly resourced and properly funded because without that this legislation will have been a waste of time. It is not sufficient to supervise and monitor. We need support mechanisms. We will be looking to see they are in place. Thank you.MARAMA FOX (Co-Leader—Māori Party): I have listened intently both here and in my office to the debates that have raged about this bill. There is no question that many of the members who have spoken have offered good advice to the Minister of Justice. The Minister has listened to some of that and we are going to have a reduced period of time to review this legislation given that it is going through under urgency and given that we are rushing to put something in place that should have been put in place many years ago—in fact decades ago.I think that the purpose of this bill as widely discussed last night is narrow. In fact I am grateful that it is narrow and that actually we are going to deal with the justice aspect of this for parole and parole only. Some of the people who are returning to us have been treated poorly—that has been widely talked about. They have been treated harshly and in fact if the 6-month rule applies then for those people who have been in detention centres for 7 months 8 months and longer this need not apply to them unless they are seriously offending. Some people have talked about the DNA swabs and the fingerprinting which again applies only to those whom it would have applied to here in New Zealand under similar conditions for similar offences. So I am glad that there is a narrow scope.We have talked about the people of questionable character. I have no idea why they are being deported merely for associating. One of those people Kō Rūtene as we have highlighted in the past was picked up visiting someone in prison. Picked up visiting someone—if that is considered association then we should be warning all of our Kiwis now not to go visiting anybody in prison for fear that they will be deported. In fact my Facebook has been rife with instances and questions of people concerned about this legislation about what is going on over there and about whether or not coming home at Christmas time will see them stopped at the border and sent back. So I am glad that there is a narrow scope here.I am glad that the Minister does not have extraordinary powers and that the courts will be the adjudicators of whether or not somebody who comes back 6 months after being released from prison will then need to have these parole conditions placed on them. I would not like to see any of those people who have already been harshly treated come back and be harshly treated again.This is about the safety of our communities. For that purpose we are happy to support the bill but also because the Minister herself has made the attempts to come and discuss the issues that we have had with the proposed draft that we got to see and to make some small amendments here and there to ensure that it is as reasonable and fair as we are able to do.I take on board the points that the Opposition has made around the urgency and the time. If we were able to give it some consideration and at least go to the select committee stage maybe we could have crafted this and taken on board the opinions of those people in the community who do work in this space.I have been given assurances and have seen some of the work that has been going on with rehabilitation. It is something that as a party we have been very concerned about hence the reason why we have established things like Whare Ōranga Ake for the rehabilitation of offenders and to reduce recidivism. I want to support Metiria’s comments around that rehabilitation to ensure that these people coming back—The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): Order! Can I just ask the member to refer properly to other members. Thank you.MARAMA FOX: —yes thank you—will be adequately supported not just through parole conditions but through rehabilitation and support services as we know that they are being alienated from their families.The People at Risk Solutions group which David Clendon has spoken about has been doing an amazing job and it needs to be commended for that job. We as a Government need to ensure that groups like it are also supported post putting this bill through. I want to assure communities that we have given it great consideration albeit in the condensed time. This is for the safety of our communities. Although we have been loud about those people coming back for minor offences we do recognise that there are also people caught up for major offences and that they will need our support our monitoring and our care. Therefore we support this bill. Thanks.ALFRED NGARO (National): There were a number of comments made about this bill. One of them which was of interest during the second reading was a comment by Mr Shearer with regard to the fact that the events of tomorrow Thursday will be “Con Air”. He talked about the aspect of a number of offenders who will be returning from Australia back to New Zealand as well.If one thinks about that movie Con Air it is an interesting story. In that story a 1997 American action film a hundred of the most serious offenders in the United States were on a plane going to a detention centre but inside there was one Cameron Poe. He was an army ranger who unfortunately through a situation and a circumstance found himself convicted of manslaughter. So out of a hundred there was one who was there and there was Vince Larkin who was the US Marshal who was there to try to save the day for this one offender.I think that the movie proves the point of some of the comments that have been made by the Opposition which is that it is true to say that there will be some of those detainees who do deserve justice—who have possibly been unjustly imprisoned or detained for whatever reason. We on this side in the Government also understand and recognise that. However we also want to recognise that inside of that there are a number who for their own circumstances and some outside of them are put in that situation where they have offended and have in a sense broken the law.This bill has been rushed through as we know because of the changes in the Australian Migration Amendment Act 2014 which amends the old Migration Act 1958 that mean character and general visa cancellations mean that we have now got this rushed aspect. Previously there had been up to 80 to 100 offenders returning to New Zealand; now the estimated forecast is up to 250 to 300—hence the reason why we have had to move to urgency.The comments across—and I know even from New Zealand First that Denis O’Rourke has been in favour—are that the principles fundamentally have been right. I just want to comment on one thing that I think has been raised in regard to the question: when these offenders return what provision will be made for them? This is called the Returning Offenders (Management and Information) Bill. In other words it is a bill that is particular in its cause and purpose to ensure that when they do arrive we ensure that there is supervision and monitoring in place in that process. However they will still be subject to the conditions that mirror those in the Parole Act of 2002. Therefore they will still need to go to a probation officer who will ensure that their living and working arrangements are appropriate and also whom they associate with.The other thing that is important is that those offenders who return to New Zealand will be able to access the prisoners’ aid and rehabilitation that has been talked about such as from the New Zealand Prisoners Aid and Rehabilitation Society Inc. and the services that it offers. The last thing that I want to say is that the Ministry of Social Development will ensure that they receive all the Government support that they are entitled to. We have talked about 5 days which is part of a period to be able to reintegrate back in again but they will still have those support services that we think are important.This bill has been rushed into urgency because it does meet a need of safety and concern for all New Zealanders not least all those who are offenders who are returning not just from Australia but from other parts of the world. The bill is intended to be able to ensure that we have a regime of supervision that monitors them in such a way that if there is any repeat offending that can be dealt with and at the same time there is an appropriate process to lead them on to hopefully being good citizens who contribute to New Zealand as well. We believe that this bill is right. The monitoring and review by the Justice and Electoral Committee in 2 years is appropriate rather than having a sunset clause. So I do commend this bill to the House.Hon DAVID PARKER (Labour): Can I begin by responding to Marama Fox’s contribution the vast majority of which I agreed with. Thank you for that contribution Marama Fox. But there was one mistake made I think and that was—if I understood your contribution correctly—when you said that if someone has been in a detention centre for 6 months following their imprisonment they will not be caught by the returning prisoner provisions of this bill. Actually that is not correct. The bill at clause 17(2) says that that 6-month period runs from the release of custody and release of custody means “if a person is detained in an immigration or other facility following release from prison”. The date is from the release from the immigration or other facility not the release from prison. I am pretty sure—in fact I am sure—that I am right about that. I have just read from the relevant subclause of the bill.I do not say that to criticise the member but to highlight the problems that we have in Parliament when we pass legislation under urgency. It is understandable that members who make contributions to this debate cannot be expected to get their heads around all of the finer details and indeed around the effect of important provisions like that one. I take it from your comment you would think that that is going too far in respect of this legislation and that underscores the fact that maybe we are. I have also pointed out other examples of where we might be going too far and I have pointed out other examples where we are not going far enough to protect the interests of New Zealanders.If I could re-traverse the issue that we had discussions with the Minister in the chair about earlier—about whether you can get the required information from someone who has returned to New Zealand having had a conviction overseas that is not necessarily known to the New Zealand authorities which I think is an appropriate thing that the New Zealand authorities should be able to learn from the offender if they have not learnt it from Interpol or some other country. This bill does not allow the police at some later stage to require someone who was convicted and has served a sentence for a serious offence overseas to have to tell the New Zealand authorities about it if they ask them about it. The Minister said that that will never be a problem because they can get that information from overseas authorities. I am sorry—that is naive and untrue. It is just not right. Take for example someone who was in Syria. Do we really think that we could get proper information from Syria about what convictions a returning New Zealander might have had whilst in Syria some years ago? It is fanciful. It is laughable. It is also true in respect of various other African and Asian regimes. It is just not believable.We still have the possibility of people returning from those jurisdictions to New Zealand and there is no record in the New Zealand system of those persons offendingoverseas—and these will not be common occurrences but none the less they are things that we can think of that could occur and that we should have a legislative fix for. What happens when for example someone is investigated following a crime that they are alleged to be involved with in New Zealand? These are distasteful examples that we do not like to talk about and I do not want to ramp them up because I do not like trying to spawn fear in society and I am not trying to do so here but it is true that some sex offenders against children have a recurrent problem. It is actually one of the reasons why the likes of Australia want to get rid of them out of there and send them back here. If they have come from another country not like Australia where you could get that information I would want there to be a duty upon the person to say: “Well yes I was in Syria. I lived there for 20 years and that’s why there’s no record of me being in New Zealand because I’ve been overseas for 20 years.” That person should have a duty to disclose their convictions.We cannot have those discussions at select committee; neither can we have the submissions that we would get from the Law Society or from Rape Crisis or even from the Sensible Sentencing Trust which as an organisation I generally abhor for its hypocrisy and for its wrongheadedness—its hypocrisy being shown by events with David Garrett when he was here having backed him for a discharge without conviction and name suppression after he had been found to have stolen the identity of a dead baby as part of his passport fraud when it generally opposes both for criminals. That sort of hypocrisy annoys me but none the less I respect its right in a civil society to make submissions on legislation. I would defend even the right of the Sensible Sentencing Trust to come along and say that this legislation does not go far enough—if that was its view. We have heard from Marama Fox and others about how People at Risk Solutions—and I would say the Howard League for Penal Reformalso—has got a relevant interest in these things. It might not be directly in respect of this legislation because this is about management and information but if there is no parallel process elsewhere in Government dealing with the need to help these people reintegrate and minimise the risk that they will reoffend that is actually something that would be highlighted by those submissions to select committee. That is one of the reasons we have these processes.I want to say why all of these things go to the underlying principle of why it was that the Labour Party suggested we have a parallel process with a sunset clause for this legislation. It was a very simple process we were suggesting. It would not have elongated this process in the House. We could have had two bills being considered at the same time. The parties of Parliament would have agreed to that through the Business Committee. One of the bills would have been taken through all three stages under urgency and it would have had a sunset clause or an end date of a year say—we were flexible as to the date—and then the second form of the bill would have passed only its first reading and would have commenced at the end date of the first version of the bill and it would have gone to select committee. Through that process we could have advertised tomorrow we could have heard from submitters and we could have taken the time to actually get this legislation right.I do not think we have fixed even the grammatical error that is in clause 7 of the bill. It was pointed out to me by David Shearer and raised by me in the first reading debate. It says “Who is returning offender”; it means “Who is a returning offender”—they have missed out an “a”. That sort of error should be fixed. There will be other mistakes in this bill that could be of import as to what the legislation actually means. We have not had the time to deal with that. It would have been fixed at select committee if the Government had chosen the process that we suggested. The idea that a review via an established select committee is the answer—I do notthink that is right. Select committees do not have to hear submissions. The select committee is controlled by the Government. This select committee will have a majority of Government members. They can just say if this is too much of an embarrassment or if they do not want this particular item coming up—they can actually cause that inquiry to be very short. They do not need to hear submissions from the public. They do not need to do a proper job. If it is too embarrassing they probably will not. Governments often act like that.The reason that we have multiple stages of processes—there is the Committee stage some time after a select committee has looked at the legislation—is actually to make it better legislation. We have offered the Government a practical way to achieve that and it has thumbed its nose at us. I think it actually shows what scant regard the Government including the Minister Amy Adams has for proper processes and for getting the balance right between individual civil liberties and protecting the rights of the public both of which are relevant on this occasion.Finally can I end by saying that I am pretty fed up with the position that the Australian Government is taking in respect of New Zealanders living there. As others have said earlier in this debate it is true that we deport some serious criminals back to Australia but it is also true that if people live in the country from close after their birth then they are effectively Australians. Why is it that we are not ensuring that those people in Australia have all the rights of Australians including the right to live in their country after they are convicted of less serious offences? Why is it that they cannot get proper social support? They pay for social insurance like disability insurance. They actually pay and they do not get it—they are excluded from the scheme even though they pay for it. They cannot get decent support as students. Women who break up with their partners and have children in the country cannot take their children out of the country and back to New Zealand because of the Hague convention yet they cannot get the support that they need in order to maintain themselves and their children while they are there. Those things should be addressed properly by the Government. They are not—we do not hear the Government standing up for the rights of New Zealanders in that regard.Final point—I am still offended by the Prime Minister’s comments last week about our supporting rapists. It was a low point in this House a low point for the Prime Minister and particularly galling given that clearance and conviction rates in respect of rapes that occur in New Zealand are decreasing under the Police department under his watch.CHRIS BISHOP (National): I just want to start my brief remarks in this debate by picking up from where Mr Parker left off. I think it was as is typical for Mr Parker a learned contribution to the debate and there are a few areas I agree with him on.What I do disagree with him on is this issue as to whether or not the Justice and Electoral Committee will do a good job in reviewing this legislation. I am a member of that venerable committee which is chaired by Jacqui Dean and Alfred Ngaro next to me sits on that committee as well. We will do a good job in reviewing this piece of legislation. The Government does not have a majority on the Justice and Electoral Committee and actually I am surprised that Mr Parker would impugn the integrity of the committee because we will do a good job working that through.The other point I want to make is to respond to Mr Parker’s remarks about how the Government has scant regard for properly calibrating the balance between civil liberties and public safety. Actually if they read the section 7 report that the Attorney-General has provided to the House members will find that officials have done a very good job in a short space of time of drafting this bill in a way that strikes that right balance—so much so that only one very minute part of this bill conflicts unjustifiably with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act and that is the section around DNA sampling.Finally I want to pick up on Mr Clendon’s remarks about how the New Zealand Parliament is the fastest lawmaker in the west. This is something that Geoffrey Palmer said a few years ago. That was definitely true back in the days of Rob Muldoon you know when we had the Economic Stabilisation Act. I think it was Sir Robert who said you could do anything in this country as long as you hang your hat on economic stabilisation. When we had that Act which allowed the Minister of Finance—who at the time was the Prime Minister—to literally do anything to the New Zealand economy through the stroke of a pen under regulations passed through the Executive Council that was certainly true but that has been repealed. We now have MMP and so it is a lot harder for Governments to do things.But it is certainly true—and this is why this is relevant to this bill—that every legislature around the world retains the ability to do things quickly. Every Parliament retains the ability to do things expeditiously under urgency—call it whatever you like. Every Parliament has that ability. Why? Because sometimes you get circumstances like we have before the House today. Sometimes it is necessary to move fast and pass laws. Sometimes it is necessary to get a framework and have Parliament move quickly to put that in place. That is certainly true when it comes to this situation. It has been well canvassed by members particularly on this side of the House as to why it is necessary to move quickly. It has been well canvassed why we do need to pass this bill as quickly as we can. The officials have done a good job. And finally in closing this debate I want to say that this is a Government that stands up proudly for New Zealanders this is a Government that stands up for the rights of Kiwis in Australia and it is necessary that we pass this bill. And with that I commend this bill to the House.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): Before I put the question I will quickly summarise a ruling that I made yesterday on the understanding that there are members in the House who wish to abstain from voting. Normally one can call for a party vote only when one is opposed to the decision but that unfortunately leaves us in a position where abstentions where there is not otherwise a division cannot be recorded. So what I did on the first reading and what I will do on this reading is that I will indicate that there is to be a party vote on this question.A party vote was called for on the question That the Returning Offenders (Management and Information) Bill be now read a third time.Ayes 107New Zealand National 59; New Zealand Labour 32; New Zealand First 12; Māori Party 2; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.Abstentions 14Green Party 14.Bill read a third time.