Barclay Todd: Parole Amendment Bill — Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeBarclay Todd: Parole Amendment Bill — Third Reading[Sitting date: 24 February 2015. Volume:703;Page:1860. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]TODD BARCLAY (National—Clutha-Southland): In introduction I would just like to challenge a point a couple of my colleagues made—Barbara Kuriger and Jonathan Young and then the Hon Annette King—about calling Wellington and New Plymouth the coffee and cafe capital of New Zealand. Let me introduce you to Gore. We have cafes a coffee culture the New Zealand Gold Guitar Awards and A and P shows galore—Hon Member: Big fish.TODD BARCLAY: —and a huge fish. Just moving on to the Parole Amendment Bill—just a segue there slightly—it is an honour to rise to speak in support of the Parole Amendment Bill in its third reading.As we heard last week one of the main objectives of this bill is to decrease the number of unnecessary parole hearings for offenders which will in turn decrease the amount of stress trauma and heartache that victims of crime must endure. Each year there are 5000 parole hearings and on average there are three parole hearings per prisoner before parole is granted at a cost of about $1000 per hearing. This bill requires that when the Parole Board declines a parole application it sets the next hearing date. There is also provision for the board to identify relevant activities relating to the risks the offender poses to the community and the offender must achieve these before their next hearing. If the offender achieves them early then the case can be brought forward.There are strong incentives also for prisoners to address their reoffending and their offensive behaviour before they reintegrate back into society. If we can curb this behaviour before they leave prison we can reduce the chance of their reoffending when they get back into New Zealand society.This bill also provides for greater flexibility for the Parole Board to set hearing dates to align with the completion of rehabilitation programmes that are currently running. The Department of Corrections is strengthening the focus on rehabilitation with the introduction of case management systems for all prisoners and they can refer prisoners for an early parole hearing if they have made significant progress.Some more work that has been going forward in prisons over the last few years is that more drug and alcohol treatment programmes have been introduced. All prisoners now have an education screening and individual learning plans. By 2017 all prisons will be working prisons. This is helping to prepare prisoners for reintegration into the workplace and reintegration into society.The current changes are having an impact not just the parole work but also the wider work being done in the corrections space. The Southern Police District which takes in Central Otago and Otago as well as Southland has one of the lowest levels of recorded offences per 10000 people with one of the highest resolution rates. From 2012 to 2013 to the financial year of 2013-14 there was a 5 percent reduction in crime nationally. The total number of burglary offences has reduced by almost half in 20 years to 2433 recorded offences in the last financial year. This is evidence that National has embarked on a comprehensive programme of reform to protect communities and to prevent crime by putting victims first. It is working and New Zealand now has its lowest crime rate since 1978.As a Government we are delivering on our Better Public Services programme and that is one of our core priorities in this term of Government. We have set challenging targets in terms of crime. We want to reduce the crime rate by 15 percent violent crime by 20 percent and youth crime by 25 percent by 2017. We enhanced these targets just last week. We have already met and exceeded two of them and now we are increasing them to a total reduction of 20 percent in crime. The proposed changes in this bill will only enhance that.It is critical that we stymie reoffending and prevent first-time offenders from becoming recidivist offenders but to take it one step back there are a lot of initiatives under way directly and indirectly that prevent members of society from becoming offenders and therefore entering the justice pipeline.The first one I want to talk about is the Social Sector Trials. We are lucky to have one of these taking place in Gore actually. I met with them last week. It involves representatives from the Ministry of Justice the Ministry of Education the Ministry of Social Development—including Child Youth and Family Services and Work and Income—a number of the schools in the area and the police. They meet on a regular basis and they pool their resources together by identifying families and individuals who need Government support and are receiving Government support. They try to get them back into an appropriate programme whether that be reintegration into the education system or reintegration into the workplace in order to prevent them from becoming participants in the justice pipeline.This is one example of a wider initiative that is taking place that will enhance the work that is being done in the justice sector to try to prevent people from entering this downward-spiralling unfortunate situation.Another example of something that is taking place in my electorate that works in with the Social Sector Trials in order to prevent people from entering the justice pipeline and therefore coming before the Parole Board is the Student Engagement Initiative. It is a programme run by all of the high schools in the area in consultation with the Ministry of Education again to reintegrate students who are currently falling between the gaps in the education system.Another initiative that is taking place across the country is to do with 2000 of the Government’s toughest clients. These are males who are currently in care in New Zealand; some of them have been in care with more than one or two families. There is one childin my electorate who is 12 years old who has had 93 foster care families that have looked after him—and he is only 12 years old. He is one of this group of 2000 children. Based on 30 years of records that have been collected by Treasury the Ministry of Social Development the Ministry of Justice and the Ministry of Education their future prison costs combined will cost the taxpayer $750 million in prison costs alone if they continue on the path that they are currently going down which is exiting the education system and not getting a proper education that will then see them being able to participate in the workplace.By continuing to service the system that cares for children and the prison system in isolation we are not going to be able to define a result and help these people out. We need to be looking—which this Government is doing—at how different agencies are interacting with different members of society and getting them to work together for the common resolve which is to enhance the life of individual New Zealanders and prevent them from becoming part of the justice pipeline which ultimately sees them before the Parole Board in the future.While it is a bit disconnected from the purpose of this particular bill these New Zealanders who are currently on the pathway to being a part of or a recipient or a beneficiary of the outcome of this bill—if we can prevent them from getting there then it will only enhance the impact that the changes in this bill will have.So if we can do that it will have a positive impact not only on those individuals but on the communities in which they live on their families on the justice system more generally and on the well-being of victims of crime as well. As we see the changing dynamics of the parole system the needs of the victims and of offenders it is timely to reconfigure the parole system in order to meet those changing and evolving needs. So it is in that context and with that background that I commend this bill to the House.