Turei Metiria: Returning Offenders (Management and Information) Bill — First Reading Second Reading In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeTurei Metiria: Returning Offenders (Management and Information) Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee[Sitting date: 17 November 2015. Volume:710;Page:8041. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]METIRIA TUREI (Co-Leader—Green): The Green Party is abstaining on the Returning Offenders (Management and Information) Bill today. We recognise the need for legislation to manage the return of New Zealanders who have serious convictions after they have been deported from another country. This is an old issue. Such citizens have been returning back to New Zealand for years and years and years. There has been no legislation in place to effectively manage this issue in the past but we do recognise that there is an escalation over the consequences of that deportation policy given the gross breach of human rights that the Australian law imposes on New Zealand people.There is no doubt that Australia has the sovereign right to make any laws that it likes but that does not excuse the wrongfulness of its law and nor does it mean that simply because it is Australia and we have a close relationship with it that we should be soft on Australia for its human rights abuses and we still have serious concerns about New Zealand failing to raise this issue when Australia was seeking a seat on the United Nations Human Rights Council. That is the kind of time—exactly the right time—for New Zealand to stand in favour of the rights of our own citizens as opposed to the personal relationships between some members of Government in New Zealand and some members of Government in Australia. So I agree with Peter Dunne here when he described—I think he used the word “villain”—Australia as the villain; I think that is what he said and his condemnation of its Draconian and unjust deportation laws.We understand the need for legislation however to deal with that unjust law; we do not agree that such urgency is necessary. We want to see some kind of select committee process for this legislation even if it is a short one. This bill deals with a very complex set of issues a very careful balancing between the rights of every New Zealander to be treated fairly and the issues of public safety where New Zealanders with serious convictions are coming home. We do not underestimate the complexity of that balancing: what is the right framework; what are the right impositions; who has the responsibility to undertake what actions; and how do you assess the potential risk if you like of some versus others who are returning especially if you do not access to full information. All of that uncertainty and complexity is real but we need to make sure we have the best possible law that deals with that because of the complexity.We want to make sure that New Zealanders have the best possible systems in place to support the deportees when they return particularly with much greater support for their rehabilitation and resettlement here. For those who have never—or hardly ever—lived in New Zealand this will be quite a culture shock and there needs to be some support around that. There are many community organisations that invest all of their time and effort into providing that support and they need Government now to back them and there is not sufficient backing in our view.We also want every New Zealander to be able to access their appeal rights and where a person has completed their sentence not to be subject to any form of double jeopardy. They should not be punished twice—once in Australia for the conviction and then again here in New Zealand—because we have a legal regime that is inadequate that tends to impose more obligations on a person than can be justified in the context of their personal circumstances—the circumstances of their conviction.So it is really important that we get this legislation right—absolutely critical. Legislation passed in haste always leads to problems. Those of us who have been here for a few years have seen time and time again Ministers coming back for urgent and rather embarrassing corrections where mistakes have been found some weeks later in the legislation that they said was so urgent it had to be passed immediately. What is even important with that is that we do not want New Zealanders being caught up in the consequences of hasty mistaken legislation especially when you are talking about legislation that uses the coercive power of the State. The right to detain a person is the most—not violent but the most excessive use of power that the State has. If we are going to make law that allows for some form of detention or deals with those kinds of issues we need to be very very careful as to how it is constructed. So even just taking a few days for an external review of this legislation would be extremely helpful.We have precedent for speedy but also considered legislation. For example we can learn the lessons from the Canterbury earthquake bill. That bill was very hastily drafted in response to a terrible tragedy that happened in Christchurch. Despite the need for quick action and the emotional intensity of the issues surrounding the earthquake the Government did agree to a short select committee process. I think it was about 24 hours; I might need to be corrected on that. That gave experts and members of the public a chance to help expose the gaps and the inevitable mistakes that you find in hastily drafted legislation. As a result of a very short select committee hearing which was held in Christchurch 30 changes were made to that legislation. It meant that 30 mistakes or 30 inaccuracies or 30 potential injustices were remedied before the Parliament passed it and that is a good thing. That is why we have a democratic process for the passing of legislation.Unfortunately this bill is not going to be subject to that democratic oversight as it should be. It certainly is not unheard of for a bill to have less than 4 days of select committee hearings and there were at least three other bills passed in the last Parliament that had 4 or fewer days of select committee consideration but at least it gave a chance for an external review of the legislation. Taking some time for example to hear from the Human Rights Commission from the Law Society and from the New Zealand People at Risk Solutions among others would ensure that this bill is genuinely effective in the maintenance of public safety without unduly breaching the human rights of New Zealand citizens.I do appreciate that I had the opportunity to have a conversation with Amy Adams on Friday about the then draft bill. The bill has been improved over the weekend and that is good. We were concerned that the amount of information that was being asked of returning offenders—for example all of their familial ties which quite frankly is impossible to define let alone to provide—was quite Draconian. We are pleased to see now that the bill requires only the same amount of information that is required under the Policing Act. We were concerned to make sure there was equity in the treatment of the returning New Zealanders and the treatment of New Zealanders who obtain a similar conviction here. There is no need for more information. It needed to be much more equitable.The review clause is an addition. It is better than not having one. Two years in our view is too long. We would prefer to see a review completed well before the election because we are talking about a review just before the election—almost bang on to the month. That is too late and an earlier review process would be better. We think that a sunset clause is probably better because that forces the issue and Parliament does not tend to do anything it does not have to as we have seen with the consequences of this bill. But at least there is some kind of review and that process could be improved over the next day or so.We were also concerned to narrow the definition of “returning offender” so that those with minor historical convictions would not be caught up in this legislation. That did not happen. We think that it is still an issue with the nature of this bill. It is too wide. It casts too wide a net although we do understand how difficult it is to construct the perfect provision. It would be better if we had an external review through a select committee process to give us new ideas about how to improve the language of the bill and therefore narrow its impact.We understand that some New Zealanders are returning to New Zealand this week—they are being deported—and that there is a need for some urgency. We think that those two issues could be split and that the dual process that was described by Jacinda Ardern is another way of going about this. We need to be creative when we are in these kinds of situations. On balance we recognise the need for the legislation. We do not accept that it should go ahead without some kind of public scrutiny and we would like to see that. Thank you.