Tisch Lindsay: Corrections Bill — Instruction to Committee In Committee Procedure 
Tisch Lindsay: Corrections Bill — Instruction to Committee In Committee Procedure 
[Volume:617;Page:13019] 
LINDSAY TISCH (National—Piako) 
: 
 We are in the final stages of Part 2. I want to pick up on the point that my learned colleague Richard Worth OBE—soon to be Dr Worth—made about the role of visiting justices. This relates to clause 19. We note that in the bill JPs who have traditionally carried out this function are excluded. 
Hon Tony Ryall 
: Outrageous. 
LINDSAY TISCH 
: It is quite outrageous. I spoke in the debate on Part 1 about the definition of a visiting justice. I am now carrying that through to talk about why I believe that justices of the peace should be included in the bill. We note clause 19 in the Minister’s Supplementary Order Paper 213 and that the Supplementary Order Paper landed in the House today. It has 50 pages of corrections. The bill is 150 pages and the corrections to the bill are 50 pages. One correction is clause 19 which states: “The Governor-General may on the recommendation of the Minister of Justice appoint any Justice of the Peace or barrister or solicitor of the High Court to be a Visiting Justice for every prison.” That is great because now we have back in the bill the inclusion of JPs who are leaders in the community. They are people of high standing. In many cases they are people who have undertaken judicial training. Some are only ministerial JPs but many have undertaken judicial training and are qualified in that respect. 
The point I want to bring forward and I have asked the Minister to take a call on it is that as his new addition in clause 19 allows for justices of the peace and barristers or solicitors there will be a two-tier system. JPs act in a voluntary capacity. They are volunteers. But when a barrister or a solicitor becomes a visiting justice who will pay? It is a very good question. The Minister may have an answer. I will be looking forward to the Minister taking a call on this point. Who will pay? Will the money come out of Vote Corrections when we hear the Budget next Thursday 27 May? Will we see something in the Budget that will allow for barristers or solicitors to be visiting justices? In my view there will be two levels. I am interested to know what the costs will be. It could also be that there will be conflicts of interest. A barrister or solicitor who has been involved in a case could be visiting as a visiting justice somebody whom he or she may have had a part in putting into prison in the first place. I say that would be a conflict of interest and that certainly is one of the concerns we have. The Minister may have an answer. While we support justices of the peace being included in the bill we certainly do not support the inclusion of barristers or solicitors. That is the reason why the Hon Tony Ryall moved an amendment along those lines earlier. 
I move now to clause 25 which talks about the functions of probation officers. It is interesting to note that clause 25(1)(b) states that the role of every probation officer is “to arrange and administer the sentences of supervision and community work referred to the officer for that administration and to ensure that the sentences are carried out:”. Well I have some statistics here about community work and they show that fewer and fewer people are turning up. In fact the statistics show that in places like Auckland and Manurewa—and these figures relate to 7 March of this year—of the 482 people who were meant to report 104 fronted up. That is 22 percent. Only 22 percent of those people who were meant to report under the community work programme actually fronted up. That is the sort of nonsense this bill is about—no accountability.