McKelvie Ian: Electronic Monitoring of Offenders Legislation Bill — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeMcKelvie Ian: Electronic Monitoring of Offenders Legislation Bill — Second Reading[Sitting date: 01 June 2016. Volume:714;Page:11619. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]IAN McKELVIE (National—Rangitīkei): I will take a brief call on the Electronic Monitoring of Offenders Legislation Bill in its second reading and I just wanted to agree with my colleague from the Greens David Clendon very briefly on Mr Workman.Todd Barclay: What?IAN McKELVIE: Yes unusual Todd is it not? He is an interesting character and he does make a great contribution to the justice system whether we agree with him all the time or not. I think it is important that he is acknowledged because he does do a great deal of work for this system.I want to just speak briefly about I guess the reasons that this piece of legislation comes to the House and the reason that the Law and Order Committee pretty much with the exception of New Zealand First unanimously considered and sent it back here. It is just one little cog in many many cogs that successive Governments have put in place to try to improve our justice system. This piece of legislation just gives an opportunity to monitor and assist people from prison back into mainstream life in a manner that gives them I think a much better chance of success as they reintegrate and also gives us the opportunity where there is risk to monitor that risk and ensure that the justice system has some controls over those people’s behaviour.I just wanted to talk about a couple of things the Hon Phil Goff talked about because I think there could well have been some misconceptions in the issues he raised. It is important to note that the thousands of breaches that he talked about are not about the removal of ankle bracelets; they are about any kind of breach that could occur. It could be a breach of the boundaries that those people are monitored within. It could be any number of things such as alcohol being consumed when they are on an alcohol prohibition order. There are many many ways that breaches could take place; they certainly are not all the removal of anklets.I also want to talk about the reason we have a large number of bracelets about and the number of people detained on home detention. It is not a statement of new risk because we never knew before we had these electronic monitoring systems in place whether or not they breached their conditions of bail or their conditions of release so the monitoring system has enabled the detection of a whole lot of breaches that we never understood the workings of before. In terms of there being a potential 5200 people who may come into the system I think it is extremely unlikely that there will be anywhere near that percentage of people coming into the system once this legislation is passed.I think it is just worth commenting very briefly before I finish on the Government’s contribution to giving people a better opportunity to integrate back into the mainstream after their offending. In the last Budget there was some $20 million put in to support offenders as they leave prison. This bill and the addition of that kind of input will make a big difference to them. It is also worth pointing out that there was some $356 million more given to the Department of Corrections to assist to reduce reoffending. That includes in-prison courses—education and smoking drug and alcohol rehabilitation courses—and all sorts of measures that the department is taking to reintegrate people into mainstream life.Whatever we think of our prisoners we really need to give them every opportunity where possible to reintegrate into mainstream life and make a contribution to the New Zealand community. I think this bill although it is a very small cog in a very big wheel is well worth it. It will do a great job and I have no trouble commending it to the House.