Barclay Todd: Drug and Alcohol Testing of Community-based Offenders and Bailees Legislation Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeBarclay Todd: Drug and Alcohol Testing of Community-based Offenders and Bailees Legislation Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 26 February 2015. Volume:703;Page:2026. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]TODD BARCLAY (National—Clutha-Southland): It is an honour to rise to make a contribution to the first reading of the Drug and Alcohol Testing of Community-based Offenders and Bailees Legislation Bill. It is pleasing to hear that the Labour Party will be supporting this bill and I want to acknowledge Phil Goff the former Minister of Corrections on the other side of the House. I would be interested to see how the Green Party votes on this one though given that from what we have heard of it in the past there are two pieces here that go against the grain—that is being tougher on criminals and being tougher on the consumption and use of wacky backy. So it will be interesting to see how those members vote.I just want to touch on the purpose of this bill. It amends the Bail Act 2000 the Sentencing Act 2002 and the Parole Act 2002 to enable the Department of Corrections and police to require community-based offenders and bailees who are subject to conditions prohibiting the use of drugs and alcohol to undergo drug and alcohol testing. I agree with the statement made by Phil Goff. I think it would probably be consistent with the assumption of most New Zealanders that this had taken place already. So it is a really pleasing move and I congratulate Minister Lotu-Iiga on bringing this bill to the House. It is very important.I think that at a fundamental level when offenders are back in our communities we want to support them in order to be sure they stay away from the drivers of crime and to keep our communities safe as well. Everybody who has spoken on this bill this evening so far has acknowledged the incredible contribution that drugs and alcohol make in terms of encouraging first-time offenders and also recidivism. Anything that we can do to stymie and prevent excessive consumption of alcohol and consumption of drugs will be very important in achieving the overall desire which is reducing the level of crime and reoffending. Just as a bit of background at the moment police and Department of Corrections staff are trying to ensure offenders and bailees comply with drug and alcohol conditions but they are limited in what they can actually do. The current legislation does not give clear authority for them to test offenders or bailees for the presence of alcohol and/or drugs and so therefore this bill creates the opportunity and legislative mandate for alcohol and drug testing for eligible offenders and bailees.Yesterday in the Law and Order Committee we had the Department of Corrections come in for its annual review. It outlined a number of initiatives that are taking place in order to reduce reoffending and increase rehabilitation. The first sort of touches on and brings together the Government’s increased investment in three key areas: the first is rehabilitation including rehabilitation from drug and alcohol issues; the second is education; and the third is work experience. I just want to briefly touch on each of those three areas because I think they relate to the purpose of this bill quite closely.In terms of rehabilitation we know that in the 2013-14 financial year there were 2525 alcohol and drug treatments that took place by the Department of Corrections. In the same year there were 5262 interventions for prisoners. That is an increase of 102 percent of alcohol and drug treatments compared with the year before that and an increase of 310 percent of interventions compared with the year before that. We can see that the increased investment and the increased focus that the Department of Corrections staff are putting on rehabilitation for drug and alcohol treatment is having an effect behind the cell doors. What this bill does is it extends that one step further to ensure that it is also having an effect when these people are out in the communities either on bail or on parole. I think that the risk for reoffending to take place and for criminals to slip back into the drug and alcohol habits that they had while they were in prison and before they came in in the first place is incredibly heightened when they leave prison. That is why this bill is critically important in the wider picture in terms of the Department of Correction’s strategy around rehabilitation.The second key area is around education. I will just briefly explain how I think that relates to the drug and alcohol provisions that are in this bill. When staff from the Department of Corrections were at our select committee meeting yesterday they talked about the increased investment and focus they are putting on education. They are saying that every prisoner has now received an individual learning assessment and is receiving an individual education plan. I initially assumed that that would be for vocational training and enabling them to get into a job and into the workplace but actually it goes right back to National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA) level 1. A lot of these people do not even have the basic qualifications that you receive when you are 15 or 16 years old at high school. If you do not even have NCEA level 1 2 or 3 you are not going to have any chance of having any vocational training whatsoever which reduces your chances of being able to be employable and I suspect that that was probably one of the major factors leading into these people entering the corrections system in the first place.I think that how that relates to this bill in terms of drug and alcohol treatment is that if you are constantly seeking employment or seeking work opportunities you are constantly being let down and you are not being taken on board due to your education and qualifications. Then as a depressant it probably drives you towards alcohol and drug consumption because you do not know where else to go. You feel your self-esteem is very low and you are not being given opportunities to earn an income so you are therefore having to rely on other avenues to earn a living and provide for yourself and your family which probably gets people on the train of drug and alcohol consumption in the first place. So the focus that the Department of Corrections is putting on the training and education space in addition to the rehabilitation of drug and alcohol treatment I think goes hand in hand. The third is work experience which has the same relationship to drug and alcohol as education does.I think the investment into and emphasis on what goes on behind the cell in terms of drug and alcohol rehabilitation that the Department of Corrections is making and the emphasis that it is now extending through the provisions in this bill—it is going to be putting this on past the cell gates as well—goes towards the wide social policy approach that the Government is taking. I think that although it relates incredibly to this bill it also relates to a number of other bills that the Law and Order Committee has been considering—and is considering in my very limited time on the committee; 2 weeks as of yesterday—but it is none the less very important. I think that tying all of these things together and the work that is being done in police the corrections system social welfare education and justice more broadly are very important in contributing towards the overall strategy around reducing offending reducing reoffending and trying to prevent as many people as possible from entering into the justice pipeline.Going back to the provisions in this bill Mr Goff focused on the principles that the bill outlines which then gives some guidance to the Chief Executive of the Department of Corrections and the Commissionerof Police to go ahead and set some more precise guidelines around that. The following principles have been put in place to adhere to the human rights safeguards that need to be in place in such a bill—The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): Order! That section has already been read out four times and I think that is tedious repetition.