Sepuloni Carmel: Parole Amendment Bill — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeSepuloni Carmel: Parole Amendment Bill — Second Reading[Sitting date: 26 November 2014. Volume:702;Page:877. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]CARMEL SEPULONI (Labour—Kelston):I was not on the select committee considering this bill the Law and Order Committee but I can see why Labour supports this particular bill. This bill amends the Parole Act 2002 to increase the maximum time between parole hearings from 12 months to 2 years. For offenders serving indeterminate sentences or sentences of 10 or more years the maximum time between parole hearings increases from 3 to 5 years. Hearings will also be aligned with the completion of core milestones in an inmate’s offender plan and this is estimated to reduce the number of parole hearings by 800 per year. We support this bill.The one thing we are very aware of is that victims of crime can often feel unnecessary stress when dealing with the prospect that their offender may be released each year when in reality there is little prospect of that. I think that each and every one of us in this House and members of the general public have seen on a number of occasions particularly with high-profile cases that there have been victims who have been traumatised by the fact that on an annual basis they and their families have had to go through these quite excruciating parole hearings. The justice system must work to support and protect the victims of crime. We do agree that putting them through this stress and trauma when there is very little hope of the perpetrator actually being released is unnecessary.Labour’s vision is of a New Zealand that guarantees civil and human rights provides equal and full access to justice and achieves real public safety rather than just delivering immediate punitive measures. Currently the Parole Board is required to consider at least once every 12 months every offender who is eligible for parole. As I said before where there is little chance an offender might be released this does cause unnecessary harm. Although we must have a fair parole system for offenders who have accepted their actions and are ready to be rehabilitated when they have not parole hearings are a waste of time. This bill builds on previous work done by Labour. The Parole Board as we know it today comes from the work of Phil Goff. Actually I think this particular bill has been sitting on the Order Paper for quite some time and could have actually been addressed a lot earlier than what it has been.There does need to be some assurances that suitable candidates for parole are not being detained longer than necessary. Changes made at the select committee with the insertion of new clauses 21A and 21B address this though. The select committee also said: “In our consideration of the Bill it became clear that information on civil protection orders was not automatically available to the Parole Board. We see value in the Board having access to information on civil protection orders which may be relevant to their decision making. We have raised this issue with the Minister of Justice for her consideration.” That was directly from the select committee and we on this side of the House are hoping that the Minister will look at that.So there have been changes to the bill made at the select committee. By majority the Law and Order Committee recommended that the bill pass with the following amendments: that we replace the term “risk milestone” with “relevant activity” as it “is more neutral and does not imply a measure of potential risk”; that we insert “clause 5A so that standard release conditions applied automatically would be treated as if they were imposed by the Board”; and that references to the Department of Corrections in clauses 10 11 and 12 be changed to “the manager of the prison in which the offender is detained” because it is unclear currently who would be responsible for judging whether an offender has completed the relevant activities. There are two additional changes: “Clause 10 would insert new section 21A which would require the Board to set a date for the next parole hearing when declining parole. It would also allow the next hearing to be brought forward if the offender completed specified relevant activities.” The final change recommended by the select committee was amending section 21A(b) “so that when declining parole the Board could specify completion of a relevant activity as a factor in bringing a parole hearing forward only when the next parole hearing was more than 12 months away.”So we do support this bill and I look forward to hearing the other speeches from the House. Thank you.