Wong Pansy: Criminal Justice Amendment Bill (No 7) — Consideration of Report of Health Committee Procedure In Committee 
Wong Pansy: Criminal Justice Amendment Bill (No 7) — Consideration of Report of Health Committee Procedure In Committee 
[Volume:612;Page:9522] 
PANSY WONG (National) 
: 
 Under urgency at 11 p.m. we are debating the Criminal Justice Amendment Bill (No 7). Laughter is coming from the Labour front bench but I do not see anything funny. I do not think that the name of this legislation does justice to the human tragedy we are talking about in the bill. I hope that Labour Party members will have a change of heart and listen carefully. 
I want to use my 10 minutes to tackle two issues. The No. 1 issue is the process of this bill and the No. 2 issue is its substance. The Hon Phil Goff in Opposition would have shown passion and outrage if any other party had dared to let this important human tragedy bill languish in Parliament for 2½ years. When National was in Government in 1999 we brought in this bill because we knew there was a situation out there in which mentally impaired individuals who should not have to stand trial had had to. The Rt Hon Wyatt Creech introduced the bill in 1999. I looked through the bill’s report-back from the Health Committee. It did a good job. It put forward amendments to make the bill more workable. 
The bill was reported back to Parliament on 30 April 2001. The Hon Phil Goff has blamed National and Opposition parties for not agreeing to an urgency motion to debate this bill earlier. How many sittings under urgency did Labour have to wait through before it brought this bill back? It has waited for 2½ years and now has come to Parliament to say that it has to bring in a Supplementary Order Paper of 44 pages—the same number as the original bill—without it being subject to the scrutiny of the select committee. Labour can blame the process and say that changes have happened in the world. Of course changes will have happened after 2½ years! Of course the world will have moved on—apart from the Labour Party! The Hon Phil Goff was outraged and asked why we could not just trust Labour to introduce 44 pages of Supplementary Order Paper. It is nothing new so why can we not trust Labour? It is obvious why a person like me is full of scepticism. We heard the Hon Pete Hodgson bring in a “fart tax” of $8 million because he said that the farming community contributed to research funding to the tune of only $800000. Now the Government is saying that it looks as though farmers have contributed about $5.4 million. The Rt Hon Helen Clark has said that in terms of free-trade agreements Labour was not doing too badly alongside Australia. We notice that the single example she was using was the Singapore free-trade agreement. Negotiations for that were started under National when we were in Government. So with those types of outrageous claims why should we trust the word of the Labour Government that this Supplementary Order Paper will not contain any surprises? 
The abuse of the process is starting to get to a point where the public has simply had enough. We had the question of the Supreme Court about which 80 percent of people said that the whole matter should have been subject to a referendum and that people should have had a say but the Labour Government would not heed a word of it. This bill is a continuation of abuse of the process in which the Health Committee had done its job amended the original bill then reported back to Parliament on 30 April 2001—2 years ago. Now this Minister says that because it is 2 years since that process an amendment is necessary and he has not referred the bill back to the Health Committee for a proper process to be carried out. But I support quite a lot of what was said. I think it was said with sincerity and with a lot of passion by my colleague from New Zealand First Ron Mark. In fact we are looking at “the fence at the bottom of the cliff”. Why do some of these individuals have to come before the court? I share Heather Roy’s view that we cannot say the whole deinstitutionalisation process was wrong but certainly the pendulum has gone too far and Labour—despite whatever claims it made when it was in Opposition—after 4 years has done nothing to address the human tragedy that continues to happen. 
Today we have heard the inquiry results of Paul Ellis a psychiatric patient who suffers from mental illness and who killed a family member. I agree that it is totally unsatisfactory once again to say that the system failed the individual. Accountability seems to be something that is now totally missing from this Labour minority Government. The report findings of this sad case say that it was due to the acute shortage of resourcing of mental health services. How many times did we hear outrage from the Hon Annette King when she was in Opposition? How many times did we hear promises that she would fix the mental health services? But after 4 years we have not seen an improvement and we continue to see individuals falling through the cracks. We continue to note the Labour minority Government announcing one inquiry after another. It is washing its hands by spending more and more money on inquiries but it is not addressing recommendations and solutions to the issues. 
I hope that the Minister when we commence the Committee stage will take this Parliament seriously and explain in detail what is in the 44 pages of Supplementary Order Paper. But more than that I think the Minister owes the public an explanation about why this bill—which is dealing with some of the saddest human tragedy in New Zealand—was sitting on the parliamentary Order Paper for 2½ years. Does Labour not find our mentally impaired individuals important enough human beings for that bill to have been passed a lot earlier? I hope that United Future stops complimenting the Labour minority Government on this bill because it was totally outraged tonight that Labour was trying to rush through a 44-page Supplementary Order Paper on a very good bill that was introduced by the National Government in 1999 examined by the Health Committee and reported back to this House in 2001. Although we will support the bill we think the Minister owes the House the duty to take it fully through the Supplementary Order Paper. The Labour minority Government should at least pretend that it respects the process of the Committee stage.