Franks Stephen: Prisoners' and Victims' Claims Bill — Instruction to Committee In Committee 
Franks Stephen: Prisoners' and Victims' Claims Bill — Instruction to Committee In Committee 
[Volume:626;Page:20933] 
STEPHEN FRANKS (ACT) 
: 
 I thought in fact it was relevant that the Associate Minister of Justice was arguing that time was significant in what had and had not been done 5 or 10 years or whatever in the past. But time is significant. The main reason for the heat around this first part of the Committee stage on this bill is not about the utterly mild anodyne or unexceptionable provisions of this bill—it is that the bill does not even start to achieve what the Associate Minister said it would achieve. The bill does not even start to achieve what people were demanding all through September and October last year. 
When we think about the time involved I just want to remind the Associate Minister now that we are in urgency tonight that the hearings on this case were in October and November of 2003 and February and March of 2004. That is when the Government became fully aware of the arguments of Mr Ellis and others on behalf of those prisoners. The judgment of Justice Young was given on 7 April 2004. He set out his reasoning in full. It is true that at that stage he had not calculated damages. Apparently the Government then did nothing until much later in the year when the damages award was given. And still it did nothing. 
By September when Mr Ellis was mentioning the hundreds of future cases to come I produced a bill that would attempt to do what the Associate Minister claims this one is doing—that is to stop the outrage of the grave offence to the victims of those criminals. The victims cannot claim compensation for the injury done to them because of the accident compensation scheme while their attackers—the people who had injured them—are claiming amounts that the victims would not even dream they would get. We produced that bill in September and still the Minister of Justice dithered. There was still obfuscation in Parliament about what the Minister would do and when he would do it. 
Finally there was a statement about what the Minister would do when he did introduce the bill—in late October as I recall. Then there was another delay. 
Quite frankly when the bill was finally introduced and people had a chance to look at it I think the media had got bored of it. I think that was the calculation of the Minister because he knew that he was not going to deliver what the people of New Zealand wanted or what the victims wanted. Throughout that time and throughout the time since when the select committee was looking at this bill this calculating Government was relying on the fact that the media had lost interest in the underlying issue. 
Well it is a shame that the bill has come back and has to be dealt with now right when the case is before the Court of Appeal. Because I think the Government will not get away with this. It might be rescued by the Court of Appeal but Tony Ellis is a very diligent lawyer for his clients. He believes in what he is doing. I honour him for what he puts into the cases. I disagree with the outcomes and I disagree with his convictions but he is doing his job properly—unlike this Government. 
This Government did not even represent the people of New Zealand properly before Justice Young. Nowhere in Justice Young’s judgment did I see that anyone made a proper defence of the behaviour management regime. We had to wait until we were in the select committee to get some timorous but quite unmistakable defence by the Department of Corrections of what had been done and an admission that as the department had been forced to “give up” on that regime it had nothing to replace it for the worst offenders. 
We have had a complete abdication of responsibility by the Government. Now it has gone to the Greens and is bringing in its “cure” for the intense outrage—and it expires in 2 years’ time. Why does it expire? I have not heard anything from the Associate Minister on why it expires. What is so horrific about it? When I read the bill there is nothing actually very wrong with it except that it purports to be something that it is not. But what it is is very mild. 
I see that half a million dollars is set aside in the Budget to run this tribunal. I would think that most of that will be used up in writing letters to people telling them why what they thought was going to be a compensation regime does not work. But there is nothing really odious about what is being done. The bill is telling prisoners they must go through the official channels first. They have to exhaust all their remedies within the prison disciplinary system before they can go to the courts and apply for human rights breaches. Then it says that if they do get something it has to be held to see whether there is a victim’s claim. The odious part of it is that after all this time it is pretending to be something it is not.