Clendon David: Prisoners’ and Victims’ Claims (Expiry and Application Dates) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Clendon David: Prisoners’ and Victims’ Claims (Expiry and Application Dates) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:662;Page:10499] 
DAVID CLENDON (Green) 
: 
 Kia ora koutou. I fear that I will disappoint an earlier speaker in his assumption that no opposition to this Prisoners’ and Victims’ Claims (Expiry and Application Dates) Amendment Bill would be spoken in the House. In the very short time since we have had access to this proposed legislation we have been confronted with the difficulty that the Greens supported the final reading of the legislation that this bill now seeks to extend for a further 2 years. On balance however we will oppose this bill as we think it is unfortunate that only a matter of a few months before the sunset clause in this 5-year-old legislation takes effect there is a somewhat belated attempt to leave in place inadequate legislation while work is done to develop a better alternative. 
It has been admitted by members who have spoken from both sides of the House so far that this legislation has not been a success. It has not generated or presented the outcomes that were hoped for it and we think time and energy would be better spent finding more positive and long-term solutions to the undoubtedly important task of securing just and fair outcomes for victims of crime while also ensuring that the basic human rights of prisoners are acknowledged and preserved in line with both our domestic and international law and conventions. 
We can safely predict that this position will once again make us vulnerable and will stimulate certain parties to accuse us again of being soft on crime or of being out of step with public expectations and preferences. In fact we believe that the public mood is for outcomes that genuinely work rather than those that reflect the very narrow and very punitive approach of a few. That is a point that I will refer to later. 
The 2005 Act restricts awards of compensation sought by specified human rights claims made by persons under the State’s control or supervision. It provides for the making and determination of claims that the victim of a prisoner may make against compensation paid in respect of specified human rights claims made by a prisoner. It is a somewhat convoluted and complex solution to what was a very real problem. It is worth recalling that at the time the legislation was triggered by findings that there had been systemic breaches of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act particularly under the so-called behaviour management programme at Auckland prison. These breaches included a failure to allow inmates on the behaviour management programme adequate opportunities to exercise a failure to notify the medical officer when inmates were put under the programme and issues related to basic hygiene cell cleanliness and access to clean clothing. Strip-searches were routinely undertaken by officers with an inadequate understanding of the grounds for conducting such searches. Many of those searches therefore did not comply with sections of the Penal Institutions Act. The court held that taken individually these unlawful acts would not have been sufficient to breach the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act but taken in combination they revealed treatment falling “well below standards that befit a human being” including the treatment of a person behaving badly in prison and therefore constituted breaches of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. 
We originally opposed the 2005 bill that became the Act that the Government is seeking to extend due to our concerns that it could be seen to violate prisoners’ rights. It removed a mechanism for stopping abuse in prisons and went only a short way towards meeting the needs and legitimate expectations of victims of crime. We listened to the debate at the time and we changed our position to support its third reading on the clear understanding that there would be a comprehensive inquiry into prisoners’ rights. This inquiry was duly put in place. It reported back to this House in December 2007. It must be said that that report contained some very good recommendations but there is too little evidence that those recommendations were picked up by the previous Government or indeed the present Government. For example the report proposed in 2007 a one-stop shop for victim support—a properly resourced agency that would ensure victims had access to adequate information services and outcomes that were appropriate to their needs. It would be an agency that did not rely solely on the goodwill of many hundreds of volunteers. Too much of the victim support work being done in this country now is left to non-governmental organisations and to poorly resourced voluntary and private organisations. 
The report proposed in 2007 the establishment of a compensation regime focused on recompensing victims for their loss. It recommended a gap analysis to identify where victims’ needs were not being met and various other quite admirable proposals were made. Some good advances have been made since then. The Victims Charter was mentioned earlier. That was a positive outcome. But it is difficult to support an argument that the victims of crime are substantially better off now than they were 5 years ago. 
There is a still glaring need to establish an independent prison investigative authority which the Greens have long advocated for. We could model such an agency on the very good examples established in Britain or Western Australia. We will oppose this legislation which in its present form has been more symbolic than real. Very few victims have benefited from it. Very few affected prisoners have taken advantage of the provisions within it. Arguably very few of them know of it or would choose to use it. 
The legislation overall and its continuance are symptomatic of the view that prisoners should lose any rights which was specifically proposed by a Government member speaking earlier in this debate about prisoners’ voting rights. Treating prisoners as non-citizens as people not possessing rights or not deserving of rights is entirely counter-productive and worsens post-release integration problems. There is ample reason to adopt a more enlightened approach. 
Evidence from Scandinavia and especially from Norway shows that those systems that give most regard to human rights and impose the fewest denials of human rights on convicted people deliver the lowest levels of reconviction. Norway for example has a reconviction rate of 20 percent whereas ours is effectively double that. Imagine the financial savings and the benefits in terms of social and individual well-being we might see if we could emulate that reconviction rate here if we could cut our reconviction rate in half. 
I mentioned that the provisions of this legislation are complex. In Finland we know that victims of crime are compensated by the State which then enacts appropriate measures against offenders to endeavour to recoup some of what has been paid to the offender. It is a much cleaner more straightforward and much more appropriate mechanism than this rather convoluted legislation that we are confronted with. The concern that prisoners might somehow gain financial benefit that is denied to the victim is very easily resolved and that point was made by the Minister presenting the bill. If we put in place more and better mechanisms to protect the human rights of prisoners and ensure they are treated in accordance with national and international law and convention then there will be no avenue for offenders to gain financial redress. 
There are solutions available to the admittedly very complex problem of needing to provide fair recompense to victims of crime without compromising our commitment to humane treatment and human rights for all citizens. But those solutions will not be found in perpetuating inadequate and dated legislation. Thank you.