Williams Poto: Electronic Monitoring of Offenders Legislation Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeWilliams Poto: Electronic Monitoring of Offenders Legislation Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 02 June 2015. Volume:706;Page:4238. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]POTO WILLIAMS (Labour—Christchurch East):It gives me pleasure to rise and take a short call on the Electronic Monitoring of Offenders Legislation Bill. During this first reading we have traversed quite a few of the issues that I hope the select committee and the submitters will pick up once the bill does get to the select committee. I think it is really important to just reaffirm a couple of those issues that we in the Labour Party want to ensure there is some resolution for. We do support this bill going to the select committee.It is really interesting because the reasons for this bill are to bring the electronic monitoring of offenders into the modern age to keep up to date with modern technology and to provide an opportunity for the discretion of judges when they are sentencing people whose offences carry a sentence of less than 2 years’ imprisonment to use this as an option. I think this is one of the things that the select committee really has a role in bringing some light to in respect of what those offences might be because it is not going to suit everything that may come out of that pot. There are some things where it might be useful and we have already been talking this evening about domestic violence family violence and sexual abuse cases and the possibility that community-based electronic monitoring might be useful in those cases.I just want to refer to some of my own experiences having worked in the refuge movement. We used to say in our particular refuge that we had six women and a piece of paper—that was our protection order—to protect victims. What I do not want to see occurring is a situation where there is a piece of plastic and an electronic ring to protect victims. What we have here is an opportunity to get this right. Electronic monitoring can be very useful as a community sentence. It can be very useful to ensure that we are not filling our prisons with offenders who do not need to be there and options can be useful in the community. But we have to make sure we get it right and we have to make sure that when we do not get it right our backup systems can actually assist us.In our current options around the use of protection orders I am not sure that we always do get it right. Our backup systems do not always protect the victims. They do not always support those people who should be protected under that piece of paper or the protection order. So what we should be ensuring when this bill goes to the select committee is that we are also talking about having adequate police resources to monitor whether those devices are actually working appropriately in the community. I remember sitting on a bus a couple of years ago glancing across the aisle seeing a young man wearing his ankle bracelet and wondering what the heck he was doing on a bus heading into the middle of town. I know that technology has changed and now we have a GPS system that is likely to go into place but even then—I do not know whether you Mr Assistant Speaker have had experience of this—there are some very clever people who can manipulate the system and the monitoring devices.I am really comfortable about our position in support of taking this bill to the select committee. I would really urge that we get a range of submitters who would think about the options where the monitoring may not be entirely foolproof that we have good systems in place to back up the system should it fail and that we ensure that those people who should be protected in our society are given the full weight of our consideration in this matter. With regard to that I do commend this bill to the select committee. Thank you.