Clendon David: Returning Offenders (Management and Information) Bill — First Reading Second Reading In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeClendon David: Returning Offenders (Management and Information) Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee[Sitting date: 17 November 2015. Volume:710;Page:8045. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]DAVID CLENDON (Green): As we heard just a few minutes ago from Metiria Turei the Greens are abstaining on this legislation and that is not a position we like to be in. We like to take a position to support or oppose. Whether we support or oppose legislation we would all agree that most bills coming to this House are improved by appropriate process through the House and its processes. In this instance the abstention decision was a difficult one. We do not disagree with some of the fundamental principles of the bill.The Minister of Justice in her introductory comments made the point that the matter of deportees arriving in New Zealand—people who have offended elsewhere—is not a new problem. She gave us a figure of typically 80 to 100 people historically who might be returning to New Zealand with this sort of history behind them. She suggested that possibly we are looking at something like a three-fold increase in that—from 80 to 100 to perhaps 250 to 300 people whom we can expect per year at least in the short term. That is a real problem. Acknowledging also that some of those people will not be offenders; they will be people deemed to be of bad character but who do not have a criminal record. So the numbers are not quite as severe as the Minister might at first have indicated but we do accept that there is an issue; there is a problem here to be resolved.Some of the underpinning principles of the bill we have no problem with such as the notion of endeavouring to align the treatment of returning people with those who have offended and have served some sentence in New Zealand. That is not a bad principle—treating like situations alike—however there is sufficient in this bill to concern us. We cannot support it not least of all because essentially we have been flying blind on the Minister’s intentions. We got a draft bill—a rough cut of the bill—less than a week ago. I think Thursday last week we got to have a little look at what the Minister was intending. We have heard already that even in a couple of days we were able to suggest positive and useful amendments to the bill that will make it a somewhat better bill. It is an unfortunate reflection I think on this Government that it seems not to have learnt the lesson that engaging with stakeholders at an early stage in any policy development is likely to generate better policy and is likely to get support for legislation if it is done in a timely fashion.We have heard various opinions about when this process began; when the problem was acknowledged. We know that at least from the beginning of this year we knew that there was a problem because the Minister and indeed others were hearing of the NGOs in Auckland that were endeavouring to offer some support to people who were landing at our airport with no support no network with a history of offending and nothing was there for them. We have known this has been a problem for quite some time. In July of this year I wrote to the Minister. I sent a letter to her on 16 July asking for a briefing for a conversation about her intentions and what the Government was planning to do about getting some sort of regime in place to manage this very real and existing and even urgent problem. Two weeks later I got a two-line response thanking me for my inquiry and telling me that the Minister had no time to speak to us at that point. That is not indicative of good process.Would one not think that this was always going to be an issue that would be controversial? It was always going to be a matter that involved human rights and we are seeing now the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act report that indicates that yes there are real concerns about that. Would it not simply be good practice to engage with other parties fairly and reasonably to endeavour to build support and critically for it to not only engage with us but to engage with the public? What does the regulatory impact statement—which incidentally we got to see about an hour ago when it landed on the Table—say? It gives a good overview of the policy advice that the Minister has received and the analysis that has been done. What are we told in this document about consultation? Well it is not a pretty sight I have to say.There was targeted consultation with the New Zealand Police and the Department of Corrections—entirely appropriate. An early draft of the regulatory impact statement—the policy advice—was circulated to: New Zealand Police; Department of Corrections; Crown Law; Parliamentary Counsel Office; Ministry of Health; Department of Internal Affairs; Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment; New Zealand Customs Service; Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade; Treasury. Nowhere do we see any reference to one of the many NGOs that might have added value to this. My time has now expired. I will return to the point of the lack of consultation—which has been acknowledged in the documentation—in a later contribution.