Williams Poto: Returning Offenders (Management and Information) Bill — In Committee Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeWilliams Poto: Returning Offenders (Management and Information) Bill — In Committee Third Reading[Sitting date: 17 November 2015. Volume:710;Page:8106. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]POTO WILLIAMS (Labour—Christchurch East): With your indulgence I would like to be able to give some context to my speech which I hope over the course of this debate becomes quite fulsome. Yesterday when I was in the House I tried on several occasions to rise to take a call on this particular bill and was unable to do so and I feel I must give my contribution some context.I was very disappointed to see the passage of this bill rushed through the House under urgency. There should be very good reasons why bills come to this House under urgency. Not only do we have one bill not only do we have two bills but we have three bills that this House needs to debate and review and pass under urgency. For the other two bills that are coming up there are valid reasons why this has to occur but for this bill I do not see why it has taken the Government almost a full year to get this bill to the House. When it does get here it is full of holes it is poorly drafted and it will require a significant amount of re-work at some stage. And are we going to be given the opportunity to do that in a timely fashion? No we are not. We are given 2 years to sit and wait and see how this bill develops over the next couple of years. The impact that that is going to have on the returning offenders is going to be a wait and see.I am very concerned that the Minister has done this because I would not have expected that of her. I do not heap praise on members of the Government often but I think that Minister Adams is a credible capable Minister and I would have expected better of her than this bill which appears to have been rushed at the last minute with amendments at the 11th hour before the bill is read in the House. Frankly it is not good enough. In fact I would have expected this type of drafting legislation to come from other Ministers across the House such as the one who will always have the ignominy of saying that worm farming is dangerous to workers.But this bill has got a really truncated process. Members of the Opposition and in fact members of the Government should be given the opportunity to speak on behalf of those who would have presented at select committee. We should be given the opportunity and we will be given the opportunity to speak their voice because they are unable to speak for themselves. There would be many submitters on this because this is a very emotional bill. There are many aspects of it in relation to the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act in relation to human rights and in relation to the safety of the public that need to be explored fully. We need to make sure that this House is given the opportunity to do that.I want to speak particularly to some of the aspects that have arisen notably around clauses 20 to 26 which talk primarily about the monitoring process that will happen once these people have landed. Let us face it they are sitting in a plane waiting at the end of the runway to taxi to come here and we are at this 11th hour attempting to put this legislation into place so that we can have some confidence in the safety that will go in place around monitoring them.From reading the regulatory impact statement it would appear there are many policy statements but no clear direction on how we are actually going to support these people when they arrive. That is a major concern because if this bill is about the safety of the New Zealand public and we have not decided how we are actually going to monitor these people—we have not got the policy developed and in place—there is a serious flaw here.I want to talk about the people from People at Risk Solutions in Christchurch and notably Helen who came and saw me several weeks ago with a woman in tow—I will just call her “J”—who arrived in New Zealand from Brisbane with 3 days’ accommodation arranged and $200 in her pocket. That is all she arrived with. She would have been caught up in this piece of legislation.How is it that we are going to be able to cope with the influx of offenders returning to New Zealand if we have not got the basics in place to actually support them? What is the impact? If we were at the select committee we would be asking the officials to give us the costing. What is it going to cost the New Zealand public to put this in place? We would be getting some really good information from officials about what the monitoring programme looks like. We would be getting some really clear steers from officials about what rehabilitation needs to go in place. We would be getting a really good understanding of the implications of the human rights aspects of collecting DNA and blood samples of people.We would also have a much better idea of these offenders—what their offence history is. At the moment that is very unclear and in fact we do not know for sure that we will ever have the full disclosure of their offence history. How is that acting in the public safety of the citizens of New Zealand? If we had given this piece of legislation the due process it deserves we would have had many of those questions answered before the bill came back to the House for the Committee stage and final readings. Unfortunately we are not going to be given that opportunity.I sat here in the Chamber when members of the Opposition parties rose and asked questions and sought advice and put their speeches and not a single member of the Government stood and took a call to defend this process. The only person who spoke was the Minister at the end of the night. Why is that? Why are we not getting the Government MPs getting to their feet taking a call and actually providing some context—Hon Ruth Dyson: Maybe it’s because they’re useless?POTO WILLIAMS: You are absolutely right. They are like cocktail sausages on sticks sitting over on the other side of the Chamber just sitting there—Hon Ruth Dyson: Don’t be so rude about cocktail sausages.POTO WILLIAMS: I apologise to cocktail sausages. They are sitting there please—do they even have copies of the legislation in front of them? One member across the other side of the Chamber. How is that? You bring the House into urgency—not you Mr Chairman. The Government brings the House into urgency and the Government MPs do not even have the ability to stand up and defend their Government defend this urgency process and defend the fact that members of the public have not been able to have their say on this very serious matter.I challenge the members across the other side of the Chamber not to just stand and move closure motions but to actually get up and do the work of Parliament and do your debate. If you actually have your pieces of legislation in front of you that is for you to refer to. Anyway thank you for this opportunity. There is much more I would like to debate and I shall refer to that but at this stage I would like to see whether the Government MPs would like to take a call. Thank you.