Borrows Chester: Victims’ Orders Against Violent Offenders Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeBorrows Chester: Victims’ Orders Against Violent Offenders Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 16 April 2014. Volume:698;Page:17378. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon CHESTER BORROWS (Associate Minister of Justice): I would like to congratulate the way the Law and Order Committee and speakers have engaged in this debate and have moved the Victims’ Orders Against Violent Offenders Bill through the process of the select committee. Comments made earlier by the Hon Phil Goff that indicated that both sides of the House—he singled out the Hon Kate Wilkinson as somebody who had been part of it. It is great to see that sort of across-House debate.I guess that as much as I endorse fully the comments of the previous speaker the Hon Maryan Street I think it is important to acknowledge that there is a whole swathe of victims who will not be covered by this legislation here. What we know is that only about one in 10—and I would sort of tag on to the back of that “if that”—female rape victims report a rape and what we know is that only about 33 percent of all rapes taken to court actually result in a conviction. So if we accept those rules of thumb—and I think we are probably being generous in the amount being reported—only about 0.3 percent of those people who are victims of rape those female victims of rape will actually be covered by this piece of legislation. So the challenge before this House is to have a reporting system an investigation system a prosecution system and a sentencing system that actually encourage people to report crime because it is specifically these matters that very rarely get reported.It would be interesting to know—and I do not know of any work that has been done on it—how many rape victims who having reported the rape against them to the police and having gone through this process actually would ever go on to report a second rape. I know a lot of rape victims and I cannot think of any who having been through the process said that they would go through the process a second time.I want to just also explain to the Committee or acknowledge the hell of a long way we have come in respect of the investigation and the reporting and so forth of rape crime. When I first became a detective I was operating under the old detectives manual. The Committee would be absolutely astonished at the advice it gave to young detectives in those days about being very suspicious about females who complain of rape and that they largely put themselves in a position where it is brought upon them by the clothing they wear or where they are late at night and all those sorts of things. That was not rewritten till 1985. Prior to 1985 it was not an offence to rape your wife for instance. Prior to 1985 what we would call rape with an implement was only an indecent assault and did not even amount to a sexual violation. That offence came into force only in 1985.I remember investigating a rape in Nelson in about 1980 I guess—and this goes back to the comment made by the Hon Phil Goff and thankfully I do not think this would ever happen today. Two young men had given a girl a ride home from a party. She was the worse for alcohol and probably so were they. They drove her up the Maitai Valley.They both raped her twice. I remember the case well because I got in trouble for unlawful detection and made a bit of case law—if you ever want go and have a look at it. In any event we arrested the two men. One of them got 3 years’ imprisonment for rape and one of them got 9 months’ periodic detention for rape. Thankfully we see now that there is pretty much a minimum tariff for rape of about 8 years and a 20-year maximum so I do not think you would ever find somebody convicted of rape getting a 2-year sentence these days let alone a 5-year sentence. I would like to think so in any event.So I just acknowledge that it was important to move that threshold down to 2 years. Also the change that was made so that the application can be made on sentence or any time after sentence rather than release is important. But again I just acknowledge that there are a whole lot of victims here who will not be captured by this because there was not a conviction there was not even a report and in male rape I suggest that the figures are even less than 1 in 10.It is important that the protection was extended to surrogates because people who are involved in family violence crimes against family members and particularly sexual crimes are in a class of people who are very good at manipulation. They are also very good at getting people to do things for them and that would include using surrogates to contact victims.There were a couple of points that were raised by the Hon Phil Goff. One of them related to whether there was going to be a filing fee in respect of this. I can assure the Committee that the District Courts Fees Regulations 2009 will be amended to ensure that there is no filing fee. What does filing entail? Filing entails filling in a form similar to what we do now in an application for a protection order. Most people would be able to do it without legal advice. If there was a need for legal advice an application for legal aid could be made in any particular way but I would suggest that people—friends and supporters of a victim agencies such as Women’s Refuge or Victim Support or the police themselves—would be in a position to be able to assist anybody filling in the forms which would amount to making an application under this legislation. Legal aid could be available if that was required in the normal circumstances. In any event making or filing an application amounts to completing a form. I know that some forms can be relatively complicated but I also am sure that those people who need to fill in that form would be able to do so with the assistance of the agency if they chose to do that their friends or supporters or the people who are behind the court counter ready to receive the application.The point was made by the member Raymond Huo about whether these services were available around the country and whether for instance the police would be able to access an order once it was made. The way in which the police are currently resourced particularly electronically would mean that a simple check on the name of either the offender or the victim would be able to easily identify whether there was such an order in place.I just want to reassure the Committee given the comments and the questions that were raised that I believe that the bill goes a long way towards settling a number of issues. An aside was made by the member about the resources of Women’s Refuge. I understand the challenges of resourcing these social agencies but in the end we are talking about filling in a form. I do not think that that would suck up a whole lot of resource from an agency charged with and taking on the vocation of helping and supporting the needs of vulnerable people. I will leave it there but I hope that I have covered the questions outlined by those.