Goldsmith Paul; O'Connor GregHon PAUL GOLDSMITH (National): Thank you Mr Speaker. I rise to speak on this the parole special conditions imposed on extended supervision orders amendment bill which has been rushed into the House today by the Government to fix a problem that has emerged over the last few years. National will of course be supporting this bill and we support it being done quickly for the purposes of maintaining public safety.So just to give people a sense of what the issue is there's a small group of people—26 currently across the country—who have been given extended supervision orders by a sentencing court for an offender who has exhibited long-term patterns of serious sexual or violent offending and who poses a real and ongoing risk of reoffending. So this is not a widespread or a large group but a very small group of very dangerous offenders that the justice system has determined need to be looked after in a serious way even after they've finished their jail sentence.For a long time there have been a number of providers throughout the country who look after this small group and the practice has been that they stay overnight with a particular provider and in many instances during the day they are also looked after by the same provider. It's emerged at some point along the way that somebody has raised the point that Well hang on this may breach section 107K(3)(bb)(ii) of the 2002 Act." which says that a person shouldn't be kept in the same spot by the same group overnight or with the same provider. So that's left a question mark about whether the practice that's been under way for a long time is legal. In the worst case I suppose if somebody was to challenge it they could just walk free during the day or during the night—one of the two areas—and be unsupervised and a major risk to public safety.One of the two fundamental questions that we have—and we hope that the Minister will explain and elucidate perhaps during the committee stage—is when did the Government become aware of this issue? At some point the Government made the decision to ask for a High Court declaratory judgment because at some point obviously the issue was raised as to whether the current practice was legal or not. So they decided in their wisdom—I would have thought they would have had two options at that point which is to say that if somebody raised a question of whether this is legal or not they could have right there and then brought in legislation such as we have here to deal with the issue in order to be watertight and water safe. But instead they decided to go to the High Court and ask the question of whether the current practice stacks up under the legislation.They went to the High Court and then on 27 June this year the High Court determined that that section does prevent the board from imposing a special condition that requires an extended supervision order offender to reside with—or results in the offender residing with—their programme provider. I suppose the second question we have is: well when the Government decided to go for that judgment from the High Court why did they not have a plan B in place recognising that there was always a chance that there was always a chance that the High Court might decide this? I would have thought they should have had a plan in place right then right there to sort the issue but instead what we've had is a period of nearly 2½ months following the judgment from the High Court where the judgment has been up online and in theory people could have read it and in theory they could have just walked away from their supervision. Now it seems like the Government has got away with it and nobody has but that seems to have been a reasonably risky approach. So I suppose our question is: when did the Government know about it and why did they not have a better plan in place when they went to the High Court?Having said all that what's happened has happened and so we agree that this legislation today is required in order to ensure that the current practice can continue. People might ask "Well why can the Government not just change the practice and have one provider to look after these people overnight and another one to look after them during the day?" The advice that we've been shown suggests that that could be done but it would take a long time to get that in place and to find providers who are able to do that. I don't know whether that's the case or not. I assume that as that's the advice we were given and maybe we might be able to hear a little bit more also from the Minister to explain just why it's impossible to do that or difficult to do that in a timely fashion.Ultimately this comes down to the effectiveness of any Government to keep New Zealanders safe from what is like I say 26 people currently—a very small group of very dangerous offenders. We would like to think that the Government would be absolutely focused on ensuring that the systems are in place to deal with that effectively. We support this legislation but we are like I say concerned that the events were able to carry on in this way for a few months where that uncertainty was allowed to continue and the response has been I believe a little bit slow in dealing with it. But we will have a chance to debate that briefly this morning and get the legislation passed so that New Zealanders can be reassured that the current conditions in place can continue. With that I'll leave it there. Thank you.DEPUTY SPEAKER: The question is that the motion be agreed to."