Sepuloni Carmel: Sentencing (Offender Levy) Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Sepuloni Carmel: Sentencing (Offender Levy) Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
[Sitting date: 20 October 2009. Volume:658;Page:7343. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
CARMEL SEPULONI (Labour) 
: 
 Before I start I want to go back to something that Mr Borrows said earlier about how the National Government has come up with this Sentencing (Offender Levy) Amendment Bill based on research. I say to Mr Borrows that I find that really interesting. I would love to see that research because I do not believe that we have seen it yet. The fact that the National Government is basing something on research is in complete contrast to what it has done with everything else. I say to Mr Borrows that I would like to see that research if he has it. 
Labour members are not opposed to this bill but we believe that it will do very little to assist victims of crime. That is our major issue with it. Just like much of the National Government’s other legislation this is window dressing. It is another example of the National Government’s ploy to give ordinary New Zealanders the impression that it is taking extreme steps to tackle law and order extreme steps to protect victims and extreme steps to enforce punitive measures to punish criminals but it is all a farce. The word for this Government is farcical. It has bought into the idea that perception is everything and in the process of creating this perception of being tough on crime it has brought to the House a series of bills that although not harmful will do little to help reduce crime to protect New Zealanders and to compensate and care for victims. 
The National Government has raised unrealistic expectations in the public about what it will deliver through this bill. Victims of crime are destined to be disappointed. The legislation sets out a $50 levy that will apply automatically when an offender has been sentenced in criminal jurisdictions. No matter which way we look at this we see that it is quite a shambles. There are questions that have to be asked: what is the likelihood of these sentenced offenders paying the levy; will the cost of the bureaucracy required to enforce and collect this levy outweigh the benefits to the actual victim; and will the money collected to provide any level of assistance to the victim let alone any adequate level of assistance be enough? 
Paul Quinn 
: It’s hard to put passion into the standard rhetoric you’ve been given isn’t it? 
CARMEL SEPULONI 
: The bill provides nothing more than lip service—just like that member over there Mr Quinn—to the victims and represents gross Government hypocrisy given the cutbacks to accident compensation entitlements. 
Paul Quinn 
: That’s the problem when you don’t write your own speeches. 
CARMEL SEPULONI 
: The member over there is going on and on. I know that he finds it difficult to stand up without yelling but I can speak calmly. 
If the Government really cared about victims it would not be attempting to make sexual abuse victims have to go to the media or an MP to reverse Accident Compensation Corporation (ACC) decisions to limit their counselling. An earlier speaker commented that this was not related. Well it is related. When we look at the legislation that this Government is proposing we have to look at the entirety of it. We have to look at what it is trying to do on one hand while here it is trying to do something else on the other hand. At the end of the day we are seeing a contradiction. So it is relevant and it is something that the public needs to be aware of. 
With regards to accident compensation we have recently seen a Taranaki grandmother of two young boys who had been raped sodomised and beaten being forced to go to the media and to her local MP Jonathan Young to beg for counselling. The ACC-approved counsellors said that the boys needed counselling and the police said that they needed counselling but ACC turned them down. It seems the new step in the procedures could be trial by media or MPs and that is something that this National Government has imposed on the public. Because this Government has been sitting on its hands there are 1100 cases pending of people needing sexual abuse counselling. If this Government really cared about victims it would not be cutting the entitlements that families of suicide victims currently receive. Does this sound like a Government that cares about victims: “If my doctor told me that I was terminally ill and had 30 days to live with the ACC rules the way they are I’d be finding myself a train to throw myself under on the 29th day because my family would be treated so much more generously.”? 
Hon Anne Tolley 
: Who wrote this? 
CARMEL SEPULONI 
: Well I say to Ms Tolley that I did not write that; it was her colleague Nick Smith and I ask her to remember that. 
The reality for victims is that this approach is getting worse not better. It is astounding that Simon Power can keep a straight face when he says that the negative impact of crime on victims is a priority for this Government. National made a big deal in the election year of being on the side of victims. This bill which levies all offenders regardless of their offence has a paltry $50 as the upshot. The worst offenders who get jail sentences will be unable to pay the levy anyway. 
Hon Anne Tolley 
: Oh we’ve got back to the bill! 
CARMEL SEPULONI 
: The Minister Anne Tolley is going on again about what I am saying but if someone wrote her speeches she would be much better off than standing up and making them up for herself. 
This offender levy scheme will require a bureaucracy to administer it and the collection costs are likely to outweigh the returns. Simon Power claimed that the scheme would collect about $5 million a year for victims and then he was forced to scale back to predictions of $13.6 over the next 4 years—very different from the $5 million a year for victims he initially claimed. When we subtract the estimated $1.3 million that it will cost to set up the levy and the estimated $1.5 million it will cost to run suddenly we have half the amount available for victims. 
It is already difficult enough to collect reparations from criminals so we on this side of the House struggle to comprehend why the National Government thinks that it will be any easier to collect this levy. It is unfair to victims of crime to raise expectations of greater compensation when National members know the reality is that this will make absolutely no difference. It was revealed in the Ministry of Justice document  
Structure of Operations in the Ministry: Proposals for Consultation  
that people who owe the offender levy will be grouped based on their willingness and ability to pay and their attitude towards compliance. The Government is prepared to tolerate targeting only those most likely to pay while hardcore fine-defaulters are let off the hook. Even National’s Minister of Corrections and Minister of Police herself Judith Collins has admitted that fines for crime do not work. She stated: “There’s no point fining people who don’t pay fines when you’ve got other action to take.” Again that was one of National’s own Ministers. 
Increasing victims’ rights is about restoring some fairness to an unfair situation but this scheme will lack the consistency to deliver that. It would be unfair if the amount of compensation varied from year to year depending on the ability of the Ministry of Justice to collect revenue from offenders. Labour had already asked the Law Commission to look into the best options for setting up a proper victims’ compensation scheme to ensure that the inequalities and inefficiencies in National’s scheme could be avoided. By disregarding the Law Commission’s advice National has delivered New Zealanders a substandard scheme. We on this side think that it would be more effective to give the money it would take to set up this bureaucracy to an organisation like Victim Support. 
I want to briefly discuss the Labour view on the issue at hand. Labour members of the Justice and Electoral Committee support increased funding for victims of serious crime. On that basis they support the bill but with reservations. They noted that funding for the scheme is at the cost of the disestablishment of the Sentencing Council which would have improved the justice system by delivering consistency with sentencing. Further they expressed concerns about the high administration costs of the scheme and the possibility that the levy could detrimentally affect reparation payments. The Labour members of the committee stated very clearly that they intend to closely monitor the effectiveness of this scheme and that is what members on this side of the House will be doing. We support this bill for the reason that although it does not help it also does not harm. We have been pushed into a corner and therefore we support the bill. Thank you very much.