Goff Phil: Victims’ Orders Against Violent Offenders Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeGoff Phil: Victims’ Orders Against Violent Offenders Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 16 April 2014. Volume:698;Page:17373. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon PHIL GOFF (Labour—Mt Roskill): It is a night for it. This is Part 1 and the most important clause in Part 1 is the purpose clause 3 which acknowledges the ongoing serious effects of serious violent offending for victims and of course everybody in the House would acknowledge that as a matter that we need to address. Secondly it empowers the court on an application by the victim to make a non-contact order prohibiting the offender from having any form of contact with the victim. Both of those goals are worthy of support and the Labour Opposition has supported the first reading of the Victim’s Orders Against Violent Offenders Bill. But in the first readingof the bill we made it very clear that there were some fundamental flaws in the bill that needed to be addressed by the Law and Order Committee.The first flaw was a huge flaw. It said that you could make an application for a non-contact order as long as the person who had for example raped you had been sentenced to 5 years’ imprisonment or more. If however that person had been sentenced to only 4½ years’ imprisonment you got no protection under this bill. Mr Chairman you are the member of Parliament for Invercargill so you will be familiar with the case that led to this legislation being introduced. It is worth mentioning to the Committee that the gap in the system was highlighted by the case of an unfortunate young woman who had been raped and the offender had been sentenced. The offender had been sentenced to 4 years’ imprisonment. That offender having served the period of the prison sentence he was required to then moved in next door to his victim. Can you imagine how that young woman felt about that—to wake up every morning knowing that you are likely to confront in the street outside your own home the person who had been jailed for raping you? That was not a fair go and there was nothing that that woman could do about the situation that she was placed in. There was a clear gap in the system.I asked in the first reading and raised in the select committee—and I think Kate Wilkinson raised the same question actually in the first reading—the question of why there should ever be a threshold set at 5 years. Where did the figure come from? I suspected that it was an arbitrary figure and I think the evidence is that it was totally arbitrary. Then the select committee listening to the submission that Labour made on this said: “OK let’s lower it to 3 years”. I said “Three years fine. Where does that figure come from?” and there was no answer. That too was an arbitrary figure.Thinking back to the Sentencing Act and the Parole Act which I had been Minister of Justice for in 2002 I thought that well in the Parole Act there is a threshold level of 2 years that differentiates a less serious from a more serious offence. How does it differentiate it? For example if the sentence is more than 2 years the person will then come before the Parole Board before they can be released. There was a threshold that was already established in law. If you are sentenced to more than 2 years you are likely to be on the victim notification register. So it seemed to the Labour Party that we needed a threshold of 2 years not 5 years. The Minister of Justice who introduced this bill was saying that 5 years was going to solve it. The rhetoric was flourishing in the House about how important this was but when the Minister was confronted with the fact that the legislation did not help the very person whose case had sparked the need for the legislation basically she had nowhere to go.So I am happy to report back to the Committee that what we did in the select committee on the instigation of the Labour Party in reducing that threshold to 2 years makes a big change. The size of the change can be seen from the information that we elicited on it. At a threshold of 5 years this non-contact order was estimated to affect 10 people a year—10 people a year. I do not have the figures for the number of people who have been the victim of sexual violation each year but it would run into the hundreds or maybe even more—maybe into the thousands. The legislation as the National Government introduced it was plainly inadequate but that aspect of the legislation has now been repaired in the bill as reported back. To that extent this is a better piece of legislation. It was a victory for the Labour Party but most important it was a victory for common sense.The second thing that we were concerned about with the bill as introduced by the Minister was that you could not apply for a non-contact order until after the inmate had finished his or her sentence and had been released. Before the select committee we heard evidence from people who had been victims of efforts by the offender to contact them from within the prison walls. Minister Borrows the Department of Correctionsshould have dealt with that—it should have dealt with that—but this bill would have provided another protection if a non-contact order had been available for the victim. But even more important there was clearly the difficulty that when the person was released and before the victim could get a non-contact order there was going to be a space of time when the victim might be confronted with that offender either close to where he or she lived or where he or she worked.It made sense to us in the Labour Party that the non-contact order should be available not from the time of the release of the inmate into the community but from the time of sentencing the inmate to the prison sentence in the first instance. Again it was a victory for Labour and a victory for common sense that we were able to get that change. So in two really important ways this legislation as reported back to the House has been strengthened and it better meets the purpose set out in clause 3 of this bill.On the third issue I have got to give some credit for it to the New Zealand First Party as well as the Labour Party. That is the question of where the offender used a surrogate to apply pressure to his victim—where the offender approached a third party and said “I want you to contact this woman and say such and such.” We needed to have a way in which a non-contact order could be made to apply in those circumstances to a third party. You have to be careful in the way that you do that and we have set certain standards that have to be reached before a non-contact order can be applied. One is that the offender must have asked the third party to take this action involving the victim; secondly the third party must have acted on that instruction or request; and thirdly that must have affected in a negative way the victim and you could well see why it would affect the victim negatively. So the third change we were able to get was that a non-contact order can apply to a third party and that is also sensible.The last point that I really want to make is on the question that still worries me a little. It is that to get a non-contact order the victim has to file an application in the civil court. What worried me—and I know that when Andrew Little spoke on this at the introduction he expressed concern about it as well—is what cost does that impose on the victim that might be unfair? Will there for example be a filing fee for a non-contact order? That is a question that perhaps you could just clarify Minister Borrows. I do not think we have had an answer on that. If you could get an answer from the officials that would be very helpful.The second question is whether the victim will have to secure the services of a lawyer in order to get the non-contact order. We were told that basically the victim could file that order themselves but there may be cases in which legal assistance would be necessary. If that is the case Minister my second question is this. Will there be legal aid available to the victim in every case in order to secure necessary protection through a non-contact order? Or will there be cases where the victim—usually herself—has to go to some expense in order to get protection against the offender? I think it is really important that we try to eliminate costs that might be imposed on the victim. The victim did not ask to be a victim. This is a way of providing protection for the victim but I would hate to think that there were victims who were discouraged from seeking a non-contact order because there were financial barriers in the way of their getting that assistance. I hope you have got both of those questions Minister. I know that in the last bill you made a real effort to answer those questions and I would appreciate you addressing those two questions.I want to finish with this. This bill is a better bill because the proposals made by the Labour Party were adopted by the select committee. I thank the select committee for agreeing to that. I even thank the Minister for agreeing to that.