Franks Stephen: Prisoners’ and Victims’ Claims Bill — In Committee Procedure Third Reading 
Franks Stephen: Prisoners’ and Victims’ Claims Bill — In Committee Procedure Third Reading 
[Volume:626;Page:21009] 
STEPHEN FRANKS (ACT) 
: 
 Ordinarily at this phase of a Committee stage consideration of a bill I like to sum up the key tensions the key policy issues and try to avoid what can be interpreted as or is in fact party point-scoring. But there is a lovely temptation in this case that I can do both at the same time. 
I will quote from the minority report of United Future. United Future has been rescued by Marc Alexander in this case. United Future has been rescued by a man who as he says has had contact with victims. It is very interesting that when we sit in this Chamber the depth to which the committee members were moved when we saw the victims in front of us—how hard it was for us to fight back tears as they pleaded for this bill not to proceed in a way that would leave them facing the prospect of watching the people who have hurt them get money for trifling ludicrous claims while they themselves cannot claim—falls away. The bill changes nothing in that respect. The chance that this bill will reduce the amounts received by prisoners is the same as the chance of one of the victims winning a lottery because the number of cases where people are entitled to exemplary damages then find that their particular villain has not 
managed to go through the human rights route and jump or sidestep all the constraints on suing—the coincidence of that happening—will be the equivalent of a Lotto win of getting the bonus. 
The Government knows that. It was told that by the Law Society. It was told that by nearly every victim who came along. It was told that the victims did not want to have to go through their wounds again. They did not want the system that the Government forces them into whereby the only role they have in the justice system is as losers—complaining and emphasising the damage. They want a role of seeing that justice is done and that will suffice. 
The whole problem about the bill is that it does not acknowledge that prison is about punishment. The whole idea of punishment is utterly undermined when windfall gains are handed out not because of anything that the prisoners have done to deserve them but because that is the only way the judges can find to punish the Department of Corrections. Instead of being able to force the department to operate a disciplinary structure that tells prison officers not to breach prisoners’ rights the courts say they will punish it by handing windfalls to the prisoners. This bill does not change that. 
The Chairperson ruled out my amendment to the Corrections Act. Here we have a bill that is said to be about—and there are all sorts of pious words at the beginning—fixing up and removing the causes of these claims yet it does not even touch the Corrections Act so my amendment was ruled out because it was outside the scope of the bill. What an emphasis of the travesty that this bill is! It is a piece of classic Phil Goff cosmetics. And the Government is to spend $534000 this year on setting up a tribunal that might get one or two cases; a tribunal that is going to administer if history is any guide no more than a couple of hundred thousand dollars a year at most. And the Government has put in the Budget that $379000 a year will be spent running this tribunal when it might get to consider dispensing a third of that amount. The bill is a very expensive travesty. 
I am glad that Marc Alexander brought United Future to its senses. That party was part of the majority that recommended this bill proceed. He has turned that round. I say “Good on him!” but it is a great shame that we have had the agony that these people went through the furore in September and October last year when people realised just what was happening. The Prime Minister 4 years ago said to the Hon Margaret Wilson that she did not agree with giving prisoners payouts; that they should be forced to go through the court. The Prime Minister said publicly that she did not agree with it. The Government has had all this time to fix it but it is too scared of what might happen when its members next go to New York and suck up to the representatives of Mugabe the representatives of the Sudan—countries that truly torture their people. They are not prepared to say to them that we will not pay our prisoners.