Goff Phil: Bail Amendment Bill — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeGoff Phil: Bail Amendment Bill — Second Reading[Sitting date: 02 July 2013. Volume:691;Page:11520. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon PHIL GOFF (Labour—Mt Roskill):Kia ora katoa. The Labour Party will be supporting the Bail Amendment Bill. In supporting it that does not detract at all from our commitment and as expressed by the Minister her commitment to the presumption that is fundamental to the New Zealand system of justice that everybody is presumed innocent until proven guilty. There has to be just cause to deny people the right to be freed on bail pending the hearing of the charges against them.Traditionally in our system there are three areas that the court will take into account when considering whether an accused person should be granted bail. The first and most important I think is whether that accused person is at risk of reoffending. There has to be a counter set against the presumption of innocence an absolute commitment to protecting the safety of the New Zealand public particularly where a person is accused of a very serious offence or where that person has a track record that predisposes them to being at serious risk of continuing to offend albeit under the restrictions imposed by their bail conditions. The second consideration taken into account by the court is the risk of absconding. Obviously if you think that a person who is going to be given bail or there is evidence to suggest that a person who is going to be given bail will abscond and not show up when the charges against them are being heard that is another risk that means you might remand a person in custody. The third is the risk that the defendant might pose in interfering with witnesses and perverting the course of justice. In New Zealand the judge has considerable discretion as to whether or not a person should be granted bail but it works on the presumption of innocence.In any particular year there will be something like 91000 cases considered for bail. In most instances bail is given and in most instances there is no problem while that person is on bail pending the court case to hear the charges against them. But we do have a serious problem with bail in New Zealand and that problem is set out in the Ministry of Justice’s own statistics which show that nearly one in five persons on bail—17 percent to be precise—offend while they are on bail. Much of that offending is of a minor nature—it may be not meeting all the conditions of the bail—but some of that offending is serious and in a small number of cases but with huge implications very serious offending.The figures from the ministry looking at the period from 2006 to 2010 were that 23 people were convicted of murder at the time they were on bail issued by the court; 21 were convicted of homicide while they were on bail; 7146 were convicted of acts intended to cause injury while they were on bail; 1132 were convicted of abducting kidnapping or threatening behaviour while they were on bail; and 763 were convicted of sexual assaults while they were on bail. Set in the context of over 91000 cases a year of the court granting bail it is relatively small. Set in the context of the victims or the families of victims who came before the Law and Order Committee whose familymembers and whose loved ones had been murdered or seriously injured or damaged by people on bail you understand why there is public concern.That is not to say that this House has ignored the question of bail laws being sufficiently tight. One of the first Acts I passed as Minister of Justice in the year 2000 was a new Bail Act and that Bail Act had dramatic consequences. It increased by 200 percent the number of people remanded in custody from around 500 in 1998 to over 1700 in 2007 which was the end date of the statistics I looked at. So there was a dramatic increase in the number of people remanded in custody. New Zealand is not soft when it comes to denying bail. The figures suggest that the rate of remanding in custody in New Zealand pending the court case is 43 per 100000 much higher than the United Kingdom at 25 or Australia at 30. The laws are not soft. Laws were changed again in 2011 but I have got to say it was more for political purposes—lots of rhetoric not much substance and it did not have much impact.This bill will make a difference but it will make a difference on the margins. The Ministry of Justice predicts that it will result in an additional 350 people per year being remanded in custody with the necessity of an additional 50 prison beds. It is significant; it is not huge. The difference that this bill will make is on the margins where the judge is considering whether bail should be granted or whether the risks to public safety outweigh the presumption of innocence until proven guilty. One of the ways in which this bill does that is to extend the situation where there is a reverse onus of proof. Normally it is up to the prosecution to prove that the defendant cannot be trusted to be on bail. Where there is a reverse onus of proof it is up to the defence to prove that the person will not commit offences while on bail. The judge still has the discretion but the judge will look more carefully at those cases because of the reverse onus of proof and it is appropriate in cases of serious offending or serious risk to the public well-being that the judge does look more closely at those cases. In the cases of murder there will be a reverse onus of proof but right now two-thirds of those who are arrested and charged with murder will spend the entire period awaiting their trial in custody. That may increase slightly at the margins.When we look at the reverse onus of proof in regard to people who have already been convicted of serious violent and sexual offences many of those offences were previously included in the original legislation—murder attempted murder manslaughter sexual violation wounding with intent aggravated wounding use of a firearm. But other offences have been added and appropriately so. They are things like aggravated burglary assault with intent to rob kidnapping and abduction. For those charged with serious class A drug offences we know that more than a third of those who are granted bail will reoffend and often reoffend quite seriously while on bail. So it is appropriate that there is a reverse onus of proof there. The bill makes other changes one of which is to make the law regarding the age of adulthood consistent. So you will not be treated differently in regard to bail if you are 18 or 19; you will be if you are 17 unless you have previously served a term of imprisonment and that is because there is a very high rate of reoffending on bail if you have previously been in prison—over 50 percent. I want to say that by and large those changes are positive changes but that we also need to look at systemic causes of offending while on bail.The committee as you will be familiar is looking at the Christie’s law petition and is looking at some other factors. I sat in court the other day along with you Mr Assistant Speaker and we watched the process of bail being granted. It is a production line - style process. The judge considers it seriously but there is limited information that may be available to the judge. There is reason to look at that to see whether we can provide better information to the judge whether there can be risk factors for which we can provide a proper tool of analysis. That ought to be done. One other factor—I am goingto finish on this factor. One reason why there is a lot of offending on bail is that it takes so long to bring people to trial. For serious class A drugs it is well over a year. If we can get a more efficient court system and we can deal with the cases more quickly that will be a major factor in reducing offending on bail. We support the bill.