Flavell Te Ururoa: Victims of Crime Reform Bill — First Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Flavell Te Ururoa: Victims of Crime Reform Bill — First Reading 
[Sitting date: 04 October 2011. Volume:676;Page:21686. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
TE URUROA FLAVELL (Maori Party—Waiariki) 
: 
 Tena koe. Ka nui te mihi ki a koe i tenei po. Kia ora tatou. As other members of the House have said tonight the Victims of Crime Reform Bill amends the Victims’ Rights Act 2002 the Children Young Persons and Their Families Act 1989 the Parole Act 2002 and the Sentencing Act 2002. In establishing such a wide scope for the bill it is already legislation with a fairly wide brief. 
I will make a few comments that will provide an even broader context and that is to include the context of Maori victimisation as our starting point for change. If the Minister has not already come across it I refer him to an excellent piece of research that was compiled by Fiona Cram from Ngati Kahungunu Leonie Pihama from Te Atiawa Ngati Mahanga and Matewiki Karehana from Ngai Te Rangi under the auspices of the international research institute for Maori and indigenous education. Their report which is called  
Meeting the Needs of Maori Victims of Crime 
 is set in the context that Maori victimisation rates are high. In fact in the New Zealand Crime and Safety Survey 2006 the rate of Maori victimisation is 1.3 times the European rate. Assaults threats and damage to personal property were the major crime types contributing to the high rates of personal victimisation for Maori. Maori have a prevalence rate two to three times that of Europeans for all these offence types and especially high rates of violent offences by partners and other people well-known to the victim. But even more depressing was the fact that a person’s chances of being multiply victimised were higher if he or she was Maori. Irrespective of the type of crime or incident prevalence or crime concentration rates these differences for Maori victims were very real. 
These factors therefore form the foundation for how we should understand the key priorities and target areas to emerge from this Victims of Crime Reform Bill. The purpose of the bill is to strengthen the existing provisions for victims of crime expand the rights of victims of serious offences and ensure victims’ rights in the adult criminal jurisdiction are applied in the youth justice jurisdiction. These are three very important factors which we naturally support as a consequence of the significance we place upon supporting all those who have fallen victim to the abusive crime. 
I will raise a few questions that Cram Pihama and Karehana first identified. They suggest to us that the term “victim” is often seen as problematic because of its association as a solely individual experience whereas a transgression impacts on those linked by whakapapa to the transgressed and to Maori as a whole. To put this in a simpler context when a person hits a Maori person they are in fact hitting all of those who are joined as descendants and ancestors to that individual. The damage to one is damage to all. 
Another issue they raised is that the term “victim” often implies powerlessness and as such the labelling of someone as a victim may hinder resolution. Cram Pihama and Karehana also challenged this House to consider that notions of both victim and crime must be viewed within the historical context. For Maori this context is the history of colonisation within this country. I think these concepts are really important to think about as we look at the proposals in this bill to enhance the victim notification system increase the rights of victims of offending by children and young persons strengthen the accountability of agencies in extending the application of general rights of victims and improve provisions for victim impact statements. 
We believe that what is most important and most needed is a holistic approach to the reduction of crime by looking at the perpetrator the offender and the causes of crime including poverty lack of education and institutional racism. We need to focus on the existing justice system to ensure that healing and resolution is acknowledged as a crucial platform for victims. 
The Maori Party seeks to promote restorative justice systems where victims are empowered and to advocate to enhance community involvement in the justice process. In many respects therefore the proposals included in this legislation help to strengthen the opportunities for support for whanau through care and concern for victims which we absolutely endorse. We are particularly pleased at the initiative to improve provisions for victim impact statements as covered by Mr Kennedy Graham. This is an initiative which of course came through clearly from the traumatic events surrounding the court hearing associated with the tragedy of Sophie Elliott. We think it is important to acknowledge that no family should ever go through the ordeal again of having their statements altered. 
I want to conclude my contribution to the debate with four key recommendations that arise out of the work quoted earlier namely  
Meeting the Needs of Maori Victims of Crime 
. These recommendations are that mainstream support services be encouraged to become more accessible user-friendly and culturally appropriate for Maori victims of crime; that a kaupapa Maori service be established for Maori victims of crime and a kaupapa Maori service be resourced as a one-stop shop for Maori victims of crime; and that the Maori processes of resolution be resourced. 
There are other ways and other matters that must be given due attention as well. Researchers demonstrated that ethnic minority offenders are more likely to be the victim of violence while in custody. We would like to know whether this is taken into account within the legislation. The validity of victim recourse studies has been widely questioned due to problems with victim memory decay a tendency for victims to revert to racial stereotypes of offenders and perhaps most crucially the fact that only a small subset of crimes are actually witnessed by the victim. We seek some response from the Minister and indeed the community through the select committee stage as to whether this issue is adequately addressed in this bill. 
Finally we note that the collection and use of ethnic data in the justice sector in New Zealand was recently reviewed by Statistics New Zealand. The review concluded that there is little need for all justice datasets to be able to be disaggregated by ethnicity age gender and location to establish and monitor the extent of offending by victimisation of Maori and interventions that work well for Maori. It was further noted that ethnicity data collected by New Zealand Police and also utilised by the Ministry of Justice did not comply with the New Zealand statistical standard for ethnicity. As a consequence the New Zealand Police data was not compatible with ethnicity data from other official sources. 
These latter matters were raised in the very comprehensive research compiled by Bronwyn Morrison entitled  
Identifying and Responding to Bias in the Criminal Justice System: A Review of International and New Zealand Research 
 which was produced just last year. We hope that all of these issues may form part of the ongoing debate in supporting and protecting victims of crime as part of families and as part of our communities. We support this particular bill at its first reading.