Goff Phil: Prisoners’ and Victims’ Claims (2012 Expiry and Application Dates) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Goff Phil: Prisoners’ and Victims’ Claims (2012 Expiry and Application Dates) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Sitting date: 26 June 2012. Volume:681;Page:3314. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Hon PHIL GOFF (Labour—Mt Roskill) 
: 
 I am pleased to take the opportunity to speak to the Committee stage of the Prisoners’ and Victims’ Claims (2012 Expiry and Application Dates) Amendment Bill. But I guess the first thing we need to say about this bill is that actually it should not be here. The only reason this bill is here is that the Government over the last 3 years has ignored the fact that there was an expiry date of 30 June 2012 on the Prisoners’ and Victims’ Claims Act and that despite having that 3 years’ notice nothing—or too little—was done. Hence we are in the position today of debating a bill that does one thing rather simply: it extends the expiry date from 30 June 2012 to 30 June 2013. So I think the point has to be made to the Minister in the chair the Associate Minister of Justice—and I know that you were not Minister through that period so I am not holding you personally responsible—that your party did not adequately manage what it was required to do to have a proper response to an Act that you have known for 3 years is going to expire this week.  
The Act in 2005 was passed for a very specific reason which was that in the wake of the behaviour management regime that was introduced in 1998 and had been in place for 6 years the regime was subsequently found to be in breach of rules that we had signed up to internationally. Very clearly the system was outside international standards under which inmates are properly treated. And I have to say that regardless of the heinous crimes that many of these inmates have committed we still have a rule as a civilised society that we treat people according to the standards that are proper within our prison system. So it is with a sense of irony that I recall Tony Ryall standing up and debating that legislation in 2005 and saying that the whole thing should be thrown out because inmates have no rights. It was I think political populism at its worst. I want to acknowledge the Minister in the chair who has extensive experience in the New Zealand Police force for taking a far more reasonable and considered view on this. 
I suppose if there is one irony it is that National has totally reversed its position and now wants to keep an Act that it fought tooth and nail originally while the Green Party wants to oppose an Act that it originally supported. I do want to comment on that because I think the minority report by the Greens is actually wrong in the premises that it works from. The idea that ensuring that payments made to inmates be available for those inmates to compensate their own victims for the damage done to them would encourage abuse of prisoners is just totally unfounded. There is absolutely nothing that the current legislation has done that in any way condones allows or encourages the abuse of prisoners. There is a whole range of ways in which when the system works wrongly and those wrongs have to be righted the people who have committed the wrongs within the system can be found accountable and that is right from the ability to complain to the Ombudsman to writing to your parliamentarians. When something goes wrong in the corrections system it must be corrected and if people behave wrongly within the corrections system and deliberately so there should be harsh sanctions against them—loss of job for one thing. So having a system whereby victims get compensation when an inmate is in a position to pay that compensation is not a perverse incentive for abuse within the system. I do not think despite what the Greens have said in the report there is any support for that at all. 
I do agree with the international obligations that the Greens’ minority report refers to. Those international obligations are real and we pride ourselves on keeping within the obligations that we sign up to. The credibility of any country depends on acting upon the things that it agrees to do puts in a treaty and signs and ratifies. 
I want to come back to the opportunity that the Government’s negligence in not actually addressing the problem earlier has created for us. I agree with Charles Chauvel that it really is important that the Minister of Justice does honour the undertaking made that we will properly review what needs to be done. The reason that I originally brought in the Act that is being extended was not so much about disgust that inmates were getting compensation; it was that sense of fundamental wrong that an inmate whose rights were breached could get compensation but that the trail of victims that that inmate himself—usually himself—had created got no benefit of compensation. I said in the second reading that fundamental to justice is that concept of restorative justice that the way in which you achieve justice is for the person who has committed a wrong against another to be required to right that wrong to the extent that they are able to. That is why restorative justice I think is the best form of justice. 
We have a system of justice in this country—that Chester Borrows knows about—that is essentially adversarial. You know we almost forget about the victim. When you have a case it is the Crown against Smith. Smith is the offender and the Crown representing the State is the prosecutor but where is the victim in that mix? The victim is nowhere to be seen in that mix. What we want is a system where the victims are at the centre of it and where the victims get proper compensation restitution reparation—call it what you want. 
We have a system at the moment where if at the time of conviction the accused is unable to give any reparation or restitution to the victim they never have to pay it. But what about a situation further down the track where that inmate for example wins Lotto? That is not quite so likely in every case; it is more likely perhaps that the inmate receives a bequest—[ 
Interruption 
] Yes. The inmate or the person who has been convicted later comes into the means whereby they can put things right for the victim but they never have that requirement on them to do that. In the legislation that I passed originally it took a very narrow sector of offenders—those who got compensation because their rights were breached—and said they should do that for their victim. 
But I think we should use this opportunity to look much wider at the way we can require a person who has committed terrible crimes against his victim to be required to make reparation for that. I see in the papers a guy in relation to Jane Furlong’s murder who was a gang enforcer and now apparently is a semi-respectable businessman. I probably do not need to mention his name in the House though it is mentioned in the papers. He is probably doing very well but what about the victims he left behind him? He is living the good life now; the people whom he made victims of still bear the scars of his offending and he has never been required to put things right. 
So my challenge to the Minister is to use this year’s extension that we have given to the legislation to show a genuine concern for the needs of restorative justice and to work through a process—and we are happy to work I think across all sides of the House on this process—to ask how we can ensure in the maximum number of occasions that the victim can properly receive the restitution or the reparations that are owed to them. That would be far closer to achieving justice for those victims than simply extending this Act or as the Minister has foreshadowed in another piece of legislation that has not yet been debated prisoners’ compensation maybe just going into a general fund for victims. The most powerful form of justice is where the offender directly puts things right for the person whom he has offended against. If we can devise a system—and there are other systems and models around the world that we can look at—we would get a piece of legislation that I think would achieve true justice in this country.