Chauvel Charles: Prisoners’ and Victims’ Claims (Continuation and Reform) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Chauvel Charles: Prisoners’ and Victims’ Claims (Continuation and Reform) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Sitting date: 11 December 2012. Volume:686;Page:7369. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
CHARLES CHAUVEL (Labour) 
: 
 I want to begin by recognising the professionalism of the Department of Corrections and the enormous efforts that the management of that department has gone to over the last decade in particular to really lift the game of the performance of its staff particularly its custodial staff. It has been a privilege over the last year to have visited I think all but four or five of the Department of Corrections’ facilities and prisons around the country and to be able to see for myself this improvement. 
The history of the legislation of which this Prisoners’ and Victims’ Claims (Continuation and Reform) Amendment Bill is the latest chapter is that when the Hon Phil Goff was the Minister of Justice in the previous Labour-led Government there were abuses of prisoners by prison officers. There was litigation on the subject of those abuses and the court held that those abuses were systemic in nature. The Department of Corrections needed to take action to address that systemic abuse and I believe there is evidence that it has done so. In the course of the litigation the court eventually when the matter was taken on appeal restricted the levels of compensation that would be properly payable to inmates whose rights had been abused by the Department of Corrections. But before that happened Parliament had moved in the way that the Minister of Justice outlined in her introductory speech on this bill to create a regime that would provide for the payment of compensation to those in custody and also a regime where those payments could be accessed by the victims— 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch) 
: Sorry to interrupt the honourable member. The time has come for me to leave the Chair for the dinner break. This debate is interrupted. I shall resume the Chair at 7.30 p.m. 
Sitting suspended from 6 p.m. to 7.30 p.m. 
CHARLES CHAUVEL 
: Before the dinner break I had gone through the history of the series of bills and Acts to which this bill is the successor and I was about to make the point that the original legislation the Prisoners’ and Victims’ Claims Act because it was experimental in nature and because it was responding to a particular problem at a particular time unusually for our parliamentary practice contained a sunset clause. I think that is an indication that this House was very much enacting the original Act on a wait-and-see basis. Is this novel approach going to be one that we want to persist with? Is it going to work? Is it going to be practical? Is it going to be effective? I think the history of the legislation is instructive. There has been a low level and a low number of claims that have been made under it. So when the Minister came to me last year and asked me whether given the approaching date of the sunset clause’s effectiveness it would be in order to extend the Act for another year in order to negotiate between the parties in the House what the form of the new legislation—if any—on this basis ought to be I said that I thought that would be fine. 
I think the issue now is that we need to look at the adequacy of what is being proffered to the House. I have two problems with it. They are problems that both the Hon Phil Goff and I foreshadowed extensively in the debates around the legislation that extended the sunset clause. 
The first problem is this. This is supposed to be victim-centric legislation. This is supposed to be legislation that says from this Parliament to those who suffer the horrendous consequences of crime that we want to do something to show that we understand that that is an awful situation to be in and that they have a right where possible to be made whole. This legislation does that by saying that if a person in custody or under supervision in custodial terms receives a payment from the Crown then a procedure exists by which that offender’s victims can recover some money from effectively the offender in token of the suffering that they have gone through. That on its face sounds really good and it is something we have supported. But the question has to be asked: why stop there? What happens if an offender receives some other form of windfall that is not from the Crown? What if the offender receives a bequest or a legacy while in custody or detention or otherwise under supervision? What if they receive a lottery win? These questions are not addressed and yet they ought to be. This is supposed to be legislation about those who suffer the adverse consequences of crime. If we are serious about putting in place a regime that looks after people in that situation and does seek to make them whole we as a Parliament should not be concerned about the source of the windfall payment that comes into the hands of the offender. We should simply look at whether or not there is such a payment and then subject it to the process in the bill. This legislation does not do that. It is for all its masquerading as victim-centric actually punitive in respect of the offender. 
I think that brings me to the second objection that I would raise in this debate and it is this. We have always had a tradition in this country and in the common law traditions that we have inherited against double jeopardy. The law and the constitution say that there should be only one punishment for a crime. Well if that is right then it is wrong in principle to say to an offender that not only will we take away your liberty but if during the course of your time in custody or supervision you come into a payment we also will take money away from you and pay it to someone else. So the second problem I have with this legislation is that there is no recognition—and this is something that the Minister told the  
New Zealand Herald 
 last month that she would take pains to address and has not—that there is a real danger here of punishing people twice. I think there should be a provision that says that if somebody is in custody and they come into funds that are then to be paid to the victims of their offences that should weigh as to their penalty. The Parole Board for example should have to take that into account in deciding whether or not they ought to serve their full period of a custodial or other sentence. And yet there is no recognition of that principle in this legislation. So I think we need to take real care as to how we proceed in this case. 
This legislation as I said earlier was always experimental. It was always a response to a particular series of circumstances at a particular time. That is why the original Act had a sunset clause. We then saw the High Court the Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court address the cases that led to the particular concern. At the same time we saw the Department of Corrections smarten up its act considerably. Those two matters beg the question of whether the legislation remains necessary. And then we have these two other flaws: the fact that although it appears to be dressed in victim-centric clothing this legislation is actually very much about doling out extra punishment and it does therefore offend an important principle. Finally on top of that we had the assurance from the Minister that there would be consultation about the form of this legislation. There has been none. For all those reasons the Labour Opposition will not be supporting this legislation.