Chadwick Steve: Prisoners’ and Victims’ Claims (Expiry and Application Dates) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Chadwick Steve: Prisoners’ and Victims’ Claims (Expiry and Application Dates) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:662;Page:10507] 
Hon STEVE CHADWICK (Labour) 
: 
 I rise to take a short call on this bill because we cannot miss an opportunity to attack the Government. It is bringing in a bill that we will support because it is about extending the dates for the legislation that we brought into the House in 2005 but we cannot miss an opportunity to attack National members who went out at the election and said that they would fix law and order issues—that was one of their major aspirational goals—and that they were going to put victims of crime at the centre and look after them. 
The Government can bring this little technical bill to the House today to extend the time frame for another 2 years until 2012 but it cannot admit that it has sexual abuse victim services completely wrong. The Minister in the House at question time today when put under some pressure said: “Oh but I have set up a review committee.” and he has some very respectable people on the committee but he does not need to do that. He knows full well that he got the criteria for referral to a treatment pathway for victims of sexual abuse completely wrong. David Parker said that the number of cases being approved per month has gone from 300 down to six yet the Government is still refusing to say that it has got it wrong. It has put in another review team that will report back. What a waste of time that is while victims of sexual abuse are suffering every single day. The trauma to a victim of sexual abuse—a child a woman or a man—will extend on to the full family. That family belongs to a community and that community also wears the effects of the lack of treatment services and correct intervention pathways for victims. 
Yesterday I met Louise Nicholas who said to me that this Government has got things completely wrong in relation to sexual abuse care and treatment pathways. Three hundred sexual abuse counsellors in this country have already lost their jobs. They had been working with victims of sexual abuse but they no longer have that work. It is not rocket science to see that if we have reduced the number of cases each month from 300 down to six then those skilled health professionals have no work. 
What will happen when the review committee comes back with the inevitable finding? And it will. This is just a time-wasting mechanism that the Minister has set in place. He cannot admit that he has got it wrong. We will need to re-enact and get those counsellors back into the workforce to meet the demand. It is wrong. It is a crock. It is everything but putting victims at the centre of crime. I think that the Government will pay a price for this next year during the election campaign because this is an issue that is affecting the well-being of our children and our families. But not only that National was going to fix crime. It was going to address the drivers of crime but the latest crime statistics show that the number of crime victims is growing under National not decreasing. Crime rates rose by 4.6 percent in the 2009 calendar year and violent crime increased by 9.2 percent. The rate of murders has increased by a massive 25 percent yet National members said that they were going to fix crime. When we were on the campaign trail every National candidate blamed the Labour Government again and again for not fixing crime. We will have a Budget in the next couple of weeks. Will that do it for families that have been dispossessed and disconnected? I do not think so. 
This Government needs to hang its head in shame over its entire efforts to address the drivers of crime. We support this bill only because it extends the time frame on the legislation that we brought to the House in 2005. National said that we did nothing about the victims of crime or about compensation. I could not resist taking the call. I think this is a disgrace. It is a sad day when the Government has the energy to get this bill before the House but it cannot simply fix the correct service pathway for the treatment of victims of sexual abuse. The Government cannot do that but it can bring this bill to the House.