Adams Amy: Returning Offenders (Management and Information) Bill — First Reading Second Reading In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeAdams Amy: Returning Offenders (Management and Information) Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee[Sitting date: 17 November 2015. Volume:710;Page:8052. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon AMY ADAMS (Minister of Justice): I move That the Returning Offenders (Management and Information) Bill be now read a second time. In this slightly unusual situation where we are having the second reading immediately following on from the first reading I do not propose to do what I would normally do in a second reading debate and go through in some detail a number of the matters that I set out in my first reading contribution. Instead what I want to do is take the time to expand further on some of the rationale for the structure of the bill and the way it will operate to provide the House and anyone following this debate with a little bit more context around that. Then I do want to touch on some of the allegations that have been made around what is perceived as delay and I can assure the House that there absolutely has not been.So if we start with the operation of the bill I said in my first reading contribution that the bill is about trying to replicate as closely as possible—and I do not pretend that it is an exact replication—the sort of supervision and management of offenders that they would likely have been subject to if they had served the same sentence in New Zealand. The reason it is not an exact fit and the reason that it has been very complex to work through these policy matters is that of course you are dealing with a regime that needs to apply in a blanket way and yet be very careful to not traverse unfairly on the rights and the provisions of natural justice and the rule of law in respect of the returning offenders; have the right sort of oversight in place; and also provide the flexibility to seek additional specific conditions when that is needed in the absence of the mechanism that is normally used in New Zealand which is the Parole Board.So it is very easy I think at this stage when all that work has been done to look at the framework and say: “Well you know you could have banged that out sooner.” But the reality is that we were having to spend far too long—far too long actually—negotiating with Australia to get the right information so we could assess the type of people coming back; the risk profile; the sort of information that anyone who has been a Minister will understand you absolutely must have before you can work through any of the processes the Cabinet Manual requires around quantification of the impact of the changes you are proposing and the cost of them; making sure we had the budgetary provisions in the Cabinet paper to make sure it was adequately resourced; and getting all of the appropriate components that you have to be able to certify as a Minister when you are bringing proposals for a new policy to Cabinet and then to this House. To do all of that as I say it was a matter of working with corrections and with police but they really could not even begin to do their work until Australia had stepped up and provided us with this information.I have said publicly and I will say here again in the House that I am disappointed that we as a close neighbour and for a long time a close friend of Australia found ourselves in the position where the impact on New Zealand was brought to my attention first in February of this year. What that meant was that New Zealand found itself starting from a completely cold start once the law was already in operation. That is not ideal that is not the way that we expect to deal with Australia but that is the position we were in—that is the position I was in.I think we responded in an absolutely timely way. My officials have confirmed that the first advice that ever came in front of me—it was certainly not mentioned in the briefing to the incoming Minister; it was not mentioned in any briefings at the time—was on 12 February. At that point I instructed them to begin work immediately on this framework. The suggestion that some members of this House have made that somehow that is all just a bit of precursor fluff and the work actually starts when you start drafting I think reflects a lack of understanding of the process. Drafting is the end of the process.I want to commend and pick up on the comments that my colleague Chris Bishop made when he commented on the section 7 New Zealand Bill of Rights Act report by the Attorney-General. I would say this but I think he is absolutely right. These are issues that could so easily have gone one step too far in terms of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act issues or equally one step too light in terms of protection. We have ensured that we did everything we could to land it in an appropriate place. Yes the bill has continued to evolve particularly with the news that came through to us in the last few days around this large number of offenders who are on their way back where Australia has not given us advance notice and has not given us a lot of lead time with the information. That information has been followed up on. Given that that is now a new development in the way these processes are flowing—and it was certainly not mentioned in any of the briefings—we have continued to make sure that that is as tightly provided for in the bill as we can.I mentioned that the bill effectively replicates a parole framework. What that means is that if you have been—not you. If the offender—sorry Mr Assistant Speaker; it certainly would not be you. If the offender has been released from custody in the overseas jurisdiction—and can I just get on record very clearly that although a lot of the debate is around Australia and that is absolutely the source country for the vast majority of the people whom this bill will touch it is not the only country. This bill applies to anyone deported to New Zealand from any jurisdiction—we just have to bear that in mind. The framework applies when the offender is released within 6 months of their return and released from custody and that definition of “in custody” very clearly also covers any time they spent in detention centres.The reason for that is that what these conditions are about whether they are applied in New Zealand or under this bill is helping to oversee the highest-risk period for an offender which is the time when they are first released from prison. The longer they have been in prison the harder that reintegration is and therefore the longer the monitoring tends to occur. It is not a punitive attack on the offender; it is about making sure that someone who has been in an institution and under very strict rules for a long period of time is carefully monitored and watched for offending behaviours and for the assistance they will require as they reintegrate. If someone has served an offence in Australia for instance and has been living and working and going about their business in Australia for some time it would not be appropriate to then turn round and impose those sorts of oversight conditions. If however they have only recently been released then we absolutely need to be tracking that sort of behaviour.The bill then goes on to provide that there is recognition that although we have an automatically applying framework some offenders will require a more directive more restrictive set of conditions. Their offending will justify that. In that case the conclusions that I reached through that policy development process were that it would be quite inappropriate to try to provide for that in this legislation. The risk of getting it wrong one way or the other was simply insurmountable. So what the bill provides is that in that instance there are whole new powers to go to the District Court and have the District Court act in lieu of a Parole Board to make the case by case assessment as to when those additional more restrictive conditions are required.The final piece is the collection of information. I want to pick up on the comments Metiria Turei was making in the first reading around the definition of “identifying particulars”. We did have a good discussion for which I thank her on this point. She had picked up a concern that I was also considering at that time which was just saying—had that actually gone too far? Had the information that the police had asked us to provide for—was it too much in that they did not need it? Actually I felt that it was a fair point. We went back and looked at it and agreed that actually narrowing that down to the definition in the Policing Act was appropriate. But let us not cast aside how critical it is that we have that information. There is every prospect that as offenders are returned to New Zealand and we get their biometric details and the like we might find some cold cases unsolved in New Zealand now resolved. We do not know that but I would not be the slightest bit surprised if that is the case. It certainly means that that information will be held in the same way it would be if they had been serving sentences here.The last point I want to make in this contribution is just really to inject a little bit of a calm note I guess into what has become at times—not in this House where I think the debate has generally been reasonably constructive—but actually in some of the media commentary there has been a degree of almost hysteria. Let us remember that we release people from our prisons in New Zealand every single day. These are people whether they have served their sentence in New Zealand or Australia who have been sentenced and have served their sentence and actually in our system of justice and in most systems of justice around the world when you serve your sentence you return to the community. That is the reality.So all this hysteria about “There’s murderers walking around. There’s rapists walking around.”—actually every single day we release from New Zealand prisons people who have committed serious offences. These people are in the same category. So let us not overblow this. Let us not suggest that somehow the public should be battening down the hatches. It is actually still a relatively small number of people compared with the New Zealand population and the same sort of people and the same sort of conditions that happen in New Zealand. Yes it is important that we have a commensurate regime in place but let us not suggest that somehow the bogeyman has landed and it is the beginning of the end. We need this legislation but I think some of the hysteria from some quarters of the media has been unhelpful. With those words I commend the bill at its second reading.