Faafoi Kris: Prisoners’ and Victims’ Claims (Continuation and Reform) Amendment Bill — Second Reading In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeFaafoi Kris: Prisoners’ and Victims’ Claims (Continuation and Reform) Amendment Bill — Second Reading In Committee[Sitting date: 08 May 2013. Volume:689;Page:9743. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]KRIS FAAFOI (Labour—Mana): It is. Thank you very much Mr Assistant Speaker for the chance to speak to the Prisoners’ and Victims’ Claims (Continuation and Reform) Amendment Bill. As my colleague the Hon Lianne Dalziel stated at the end of her speech this is a bill that we will support but it is with some considerable amount of reservation. We are supporting it because in essence it is a continuation of a piece of legislation that the Hon Phil Goff saw through this House in 2005. My colleague Andrew Little said it was a measure taken because of community unease at what had happened in a particular case where a prisoner had got some compensation and that should have been passed on to the victim of his crime. At the time the then Minister of Justice Phil Goff said that most people believe it is wrong that offenders should be compensated for wrongful treatment but in turn are not required to pay restitution to the victims they harmed. Good words—from a very good member of Parliament I should add. But I think this goes to the very heart of the Kiwi sense of a fair go in that if you get ripped off and someone has the ability to compensate you then you should get that compensation.But our reservation with this bill comes around a commitment made by the Government to consult the rest of Parliament and to have a review around the functionality of this legislation. This bill that is before us now basically makes permanent the sunset clause that has been rolled over I think three times since the 2005 legislation was enacted. The purpose of that sunset clause as Mr Goff has mentioned was to ensure that there was a review to make sure that this system has been working. The member from the Government side of the House Alfred Ngaro said that there was a balance to this piece of legislation and in a very narrow sense that might be true. But in a broader sense as Mr Goff has said to see whether this sense of fairness across the board is working we believe that a review should be taken of cases where not just victims of mistreatment in prisons were getting some meaningful gain but also other prisoners who were being incarcerated had the ability to compensate. As I said before if someone rips you off and you have the ability to be compensated by them then you should get that compensation.So we believe that there should have been a review. We understood that the Government was going to undertake a review. I believe that the last time the sunset clause was pushed out by another year or so we were told that there was going to be a period of consultation when we could talk about what would be captured in that review. As Mr Goff said in that review we would have liked to look at the issue where some people who have dallied in white-collar crime have been able to sit on rather largeamounts of money while their victims are looking at their bank accounts and their life-savings and seeing very little there and whether or not that should be captured by this bill in terms of being able to get them compensation. It is absolutely unfair and a break of a commitment from the Government to say that a review should not be held for the benefit of those people who are looking at this and saying: “If they can get compensation why can’t we get compensation when someone has ripped us off and is sitting on a huge nest egg? We can’t get our hands on it.”Why cannot the Government in this piece of legislation be true to its promise about caring about victims of crime—whatever crime it may be whether it be an act against the person or an act against their bank accounts—hold a review and broaden the scope around the victims’ rights and their ability for compensation? We have seen that that has not happened. It should happen it is a break of a commitment and although we support this legislation we do it with reservation because the Government says it is on the side of victims but in this case it has not been.