Alexander Marc: Prisoners' and Victims' Claims Bill — Instruction to Committee In Committee 
Alexander Marc: Prisoners' and Victims' Claims Bill — Instruction to Committee In Committee 
[Volume:626;Page:20936] 
MARC ALEXANDER (United Future) 
: 
 The Labour Government might think that dealing with this bill in this particular way under urgency puts it to bed and takes it away from being an election year issue. It will not because there are a number of parties here that will keep this issue alive. Not only will a number of parties here keep it in the public domain but the victims will also keep it alive. The Sensible Sentencing Trust and Victim Support will keep it alive—and there is a reason why. This bill is a huge injustice. It is a slap in the face for all victims in this country. 
The one inescapable fact is that the very act of an inmate being able to secure a financial windfall supposedly to support his or her human rights is at once a human rights violation against the victim. There is no escaping that—the point being that when we are balancing the human rights of both offender and victim they are in an inescapable relationship with each other for life from the very moment the offence took place. Anything that benefits the inmate by necessity will be a deficit to the victim. There is no getting around that. The problem this Government faces is that it is passing a bill with the Greens’ help that is championing the human rights of the offender against the human rights of the victim. 
The public will not be fooled; the Sensible Sentencing Trust will not be fooled; Victim Support will not be fooled; National will not be fooled; New Zealand First will not be fooled; ACT will not be fooled; and neither will we. The only people who seem to be fooled are the Greens. Well the Greens’ actions we can explain away. They probably thought they could get the votes of those people in the prisons. 
Gerry Brownlee 
: Yeah! 
MARC ALEXANDER 
: Well they will not. The other point that needs to be looked at—and it is something that the Hon Rick Barker talked about at some length—is the potential violation of international law. That is an absolute nonsense. As Gerry Brownlee pointed out it is only a “might be”; it is only a “maybe”. But even more important than that is this crucial question: is Parliament sovereign or not? The laws of this country must come from this Parliament nowhere else. Some pillock can go off and sign whatever international accord he wants but unless it is ratified by this Parliament it should not be a law of the land. Justice for our own people justice for the victims of this country must supersede the interests of the arrogance of some foreign affairs Minister darting about the world signing this or that accord. 
There is no reason to assume that an international accord should have precedence over New Zealand justice. In the end that is what this is really about. I think that what is forgotten here is that this Government is not the boss. This Government is not at the top of the heap. This Government like all of us is an employee of the people of New Zealand. We are employees of the very victims we are supposed to be caring about yet this Government arrogantly puts the interests of the offender first—ahead of the interests of all people who love justice in this country and ahead of all those people who are supposed to be doing something about the victims of this country. 
People will not be fooled by this. It is a subterfuge. It is a sly attempt to get this issue out of the way before the election proper starts. This Government knows that it will be tarred and feathered in the court of public opinion for this bill. Nobody will be fooled or duped by it. This is a cynical bill that attempts to put the interests of the Government’s re-election process ahead of anybody else’s interests. It is one of the reasons why nobody in this Parliament wants to support it and I daresay that many Labour members themselves probably want to walk away from it. It is beyond me that the Greens in order to get a headline and gain any kind of relevance whatsoever have run along like little cocker spaniels to support their hopeful future masters and support this bill.