Hipkins Chris: Returning Offenders (Management and Information) Bill — In Committee Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeHipkins Chris: Returning Offenders (Management and Information) Bill — In Committee Third Reading[Sitting date: 17 November 2015. Volume:710;Page:8123. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]CHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka): I am happy to take a call on the title and commencement clauses of the Returning Offenders (Management and Information) Bill. I want to begin by talking about the commencement clause first. The commencement clause in this bill is a very simple one. It means that the bill comes into force on the day on which it receives the Royal assent which is likely to be at some point in the next two or three days. The issues that I want to raise—because we have not had an opportunity to discuss this because of the urgent nature in which this is being put through—is why this bill does not also have a sunset clause why this bill is simply coming into force and never expiring.The proposal that the Opposition put to the Government was that we would support the bill—and we are supporting the bill through—with an addition of a sunset clause under clause 2 the commencement clause and a first reading of an identical bill that was then referred to a select committee for consideration. That would mean that the immediate provisions come into force straight away—or pretty much straight away; as I said once the Royal assent is received in the next day or two. But because there would be a sunset clause in here the whole bill would expire after a certain period of time once a new bill had been passed to replace it. The same bill could then go through the select committee process which would allow a lot of the questions that have been debated in the House to be properly addressed and properly answered. That is not going to happen because of the nature of the urgency.Sometimes legislation is urgent and in this case with people coming back to New Zealand—or coming to New Zealand I should say—in short order there is a need for some transitional measures. Therefore there is justification for this bill to come into force straight away—Jacqui Dean: What about the victims?CHRIS HIPKINS: Well I am just saying—Jacqui Dean is asking me: “What about the victims?”. That is why I am suggesting that this bill should come into force straight away but I am saying that the victims may also have a desire to have a say on this. Why should they be denied the opportunity to have a say on this legislation? Actually sending it to a select committee does give the victims the opportunity to have a say.It means that we could put the bill into force immediately. That means that there would be no increased risk but it means that all those affected could actually thoroughly examine the bill and have a contribution to the process. Therefore I think it is disappointing that the Government has not put a sunset clause into this legislation. I actually think having sat through and participated in many many urgency debates that most legislation that goes through under urgency should have a sunset clause with a more considered deliberative process to ensure that there is a long-term solution in place because there are very few bills that I have seen progress through the House that cannot be improved through a select committee process.We then come to the title clause clause 1 of the bill: “This Act is the Returning Offenders (Management and Information) Act 2015.” The first thing I want to highlight is that these are not necessarily returning offenders. First of all they potentially never did any offending in New Zealand so they are not returning to the point at which their offending took place. They are being deported from a country where their offending took place and they would not necessarily regard themselves as returning to New Zealand because some of them will not regard New Zealand as home. They would regard Australia or another country as home.There is a fairness aspect here that needs to be considered. When we talk about people returning to New Zealand let us put the facts on the table. In many cases they will have left New Zealand when they were very young. The fact that they were born in New Zealand is one consideration; they could have left as babies having been born in New Zealand and lived their entire life somewhere else. They could have been educated somewhere else. Their families could all be based somewhere else. Their entire relationship structure could be based somewhere else. They would potentially have been contributing taxes somewhere else and now having gotten themselves into trouble at some point—again in some cases quite minor offences could be resulting in people coming here—they find themselves deemed to be returning to New Zealand a country that in many cases could be as foreign to them as any other place on the planet. So using the words “Returning Offenders” in the title of this bill potentially gives I think the wrong impression.Using the phrase “offenders” again also potentially gives the wrong impression because are they still offenders? They have previously been offenders. What if they have served their time and they have been released? They have done their time; they may no longer be offenders. They may have done everything required of them to turn over a new leaf. Why should they be regarded as offenders?