Ryall Tony: General Debate 
Ryall Tony: General Debate 
[Volume:620;Page:15885] 
Hon TONY RYALL (National—Bay Of Plenty) 
: 
 I move  
That the House take note of miscellaneous business 
. This House is meeting as the New Zealand justice system is crumbling around the head of this Government. This Government cannot deliver justice but it is happy to write cheques for the worst criminals in this country. This Government has people locked up in prison court cells and police cells who are innocent. Prisoners can lodge claims against the Government and the Government says that they should get payments from it. 
This Government has a shortage of judges and police but we have a Prime Minister who is prepared to justify payouts to the worst prisoners in New Zealand. That is a no-brainer. Why is the Government defending the payment of tens of thousands of dollars to the worst prisoners in this country? Those payments should be blocked stopped and wiped and the Prime Minister should be doing that. 
We listened in the House a few weeks ago to the Deputy Prime Minister on behalf of the Prime Minister who warned against removing the right of compensation to prisoners. We have heard Mr Goff say in this House that compensation can be justified. So why are they not making any effort to fix the crumbling justice system? 
I want to tell the House about the indictment on Labour confidence from Mr Phil Goff the Minister who wanted to decriminalise sexual behaviour of children aged between 12 and 16 and the Minister who told Cabinet that the country would accept decriminalisation of sexual activity between 12-year-olds. Let us see the concept and the indictment of incompetence under Mr Goff. 
We have a huge inmate muster crisis with 200 prisoners being kept in court and prison cells around the country. We have a prison officer recruitment crisis where the Government admits that it is several hundred short of the necessary number of prison officers in our country. We have huge delays in the court system. In Whangarei Manukau and Auckland lawyers are warning that guilty people may walk free because of delays in the justice system. 
New Zealand has a big shortage of judges. This Government says that it is all right to send our judges to Pitcairn but New Zealand Kiwi victims will have to wait to have their case dealt with. That is what this Government says. 
There is a huge shortage of police. Burglary response times all around the country are appalling. There is non-reporting of crime; people have given up. Rotorua has the worst crime rate of any city in New Zealand and the MP for Rotorua says: “Well the police commander tells me it’s all right so I’m not worried.” That is what she says. 
We have huge delays in methamphetamine testing where serious criminals are not having their case dealt with because this Government is not properly resourcing the Institute of Environmental Science and Research. Now we find that it can take 2 years to get a person’s case dealt with by the Police Complaints Authority because this Government is not resourcing the justice system. 
 They are not resourcing the justice system but they are happy to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in prisoner compensation. And the Government hides behind saying that it cannot do anything that is retrospective. But Mr Goff has brought in legislation for the extended supervision of child sex offenders—retrospectively. What does the Government think the seabed and foreshore legislation is? It is retrospective legislation. 
Now we hear from Mr Goff that international protocols mean that this Government has to pay compensation to criminals. He was in a Cabinet that put a reservation on that undertaking—that said only the Attorney-General should have the discretion to pay compensation to prisoners—but he was happy to stand up in the New Zealand Parliament and say that we have to do it. Where was he in that Cabinet meeting? This Government is guilty as charged of criminal incompetence.