Bradford Sue: Criminal Justice Amendment Bill (No 7) — Consideration of Report of Health Committee Procedure In Committee 
Bradford Sue: Criminal Justice Amendment Bill (No 7) — Consideration of Report of Health Committee Procedure In Committee 
[Volume:612;Page:9517] 
SUE BRADFORD (Green) 
: 
 I rise briefly to indicate that the Green Party will be supporting the Criminal Justice Amendment Bill (No 7) which saw its genesis long ago under National in 1999. It is astonishing that we are now dealing with it under urgency in October 2003. Nevertheless it is high time we plugged the gap in legislation in terms of dealing with major criminal offenders who are also intellectually impaired. As others have pointed out there has been a real problem in that since 1992 there has not been a legal means by which judges and courts can deal properly with intellectually disabled offenders. Because such people were removed from coverage by the Mental Health (Compulsory Assessment and Treatment) Act they were also excluded from section 7 of the Criminal Justice Act leaving a gaping hole in terms of procedures for dealing with them. 
Although of course the Green Party has no problem at all with the fact that this group was left out of the mental health legislation for the very good reason that intellectual disability is not a mental illness—a fact apparently not realised by the previous speaker—it has been most unfortunate that a small number of people have ended up being inappropriately placed in mainstream prisons or detained as special patients in mental health units. Even now we continue to hear all too often of prison cells becoming a dumping-ground for people for whom there is simply no other place to go and it is an indictment on our society that we have allowed that to continue into the 21st century. 
Our one main concern about this bill and the accompanying bill which we are about to deal with is the level of resourcing and the preparedness of the infrastructure to support adequately the accommodation needs of intellectually impaired offenders once these bills become law. The Government tells us that a regional intellectual disability care agency has been established in four health regions and that a number of new services have been set up including so-called community secure accommodation independent supported living services and respite care services. However word is that hospital-level secure services which in many of these cases are what is needed are still at an early stage of development. The Green Party certainly encourages the Government to do everything it can to resource the provision of those services at a fully adequate and appropriate level with as much haste as is practical. 
We welcome the changes that have been made to this bill and to its accompanying legislation the Intellectual Disability (Compulsory Care) Bill that mean that the bills will no longer include compulsory care for adult non-offenders or under-17-year-olds who have not committed serious offences. It is good that the Government listened to submissions from the Council for Civil Liberties the Human Rights Commission and others that raised undeniable arguments as to the ethics and legality of placing people who have not carried out major criminal acts into what is in effect a term of imprisonment. The Green Party also supports Supplementary Order Paper 161 which among other things allows the courts more discretion about where they remand people who are found unfit to stand trial or not guilty on the grounds of insanity and also allows service providers to have access to assessment reports provided by previous facilities. Those are simply common-sense amendments and I commend them and the bill to the House.