Little Andrew: Prisoners’ and Victims’ Claims (Continuation and Reform) Amendment Bill — Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeLittle Andrew: Prisoners’ and Victims’ Claims (Continuation and Reform) Amendment Bill — Third Reading[Sitting date: 05 June 2013. Volume:690;Page:10760. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]ANDREW LITTLE (Labour): If there is one thing that the Prisoners’ and Victims’ Claims (Continuation and Reform) Amendment Bill is not it is a victims’ rights piece of legislation. It is not about enhancing victims’ rights at all. It is very much a lottery-driven piece of legislation when it comes to victims’ rights.The genesis of the original legislation was what is known as theTaunoa case which made awards of damages to prisoners whose New Zealand Bill of Rights Act rights had been traduced through the behaviour management regime then in place in prisons in New Zealand. It resulted in awards of compensation. So effectively the State was required to compensate the prisoners.The difficulty was as seen at the time that a new injustice was created. The prisoners whose rights had been breached and who won compensation as a consequence had themselves—it is self-evident—breached the rights of their victims who had no claim against them. Under the common law rights that those victims had they had lost the right to make a claim even putting aside the accident compensation rights they had. They could not make a claim for exemplary damages for the conduct of the prisoners. So the prisoners enjoyed a windfall and the victims continued to suffer the consequences of the crimes committed against them. The Government of the day the Labour Government introduced the legislation to ensure that any awards of damages went to compensate both the State and the victims before the prisoners themselves received any amount of compensation.That situation was not and will not be under the legislation we are now considering without conflicting values and principles. It is not right that prisoners should be subject to mistreatment while in prison. We sentence people to prison to deprive them of their liberty as a sanction against their antisocial conduct. We do not send them to prison to be further mistreated abused and treated in improper ways. That is not acceptable and so it is correct that the State which is the custodian of these people while they are incarcerated should itself face a sanction.Equally it is wrong that access to compensation by victims should be dependent on what might be described as the entirely fortuitous circumstance that the perpetrator of the crime against them is him or herself subject to a violation that leads to a compensable right which leads to compensation that can then be claimed by the victim. That does not deal with victims’ rights at all. So there are limitations. Although we can understand that there is an injustice that ought to be and continue to be addressed it is not a satisfactory conclusion or a resolution to the overarching issue of victims’ rights and the ability to be fully compensated for the loss that victims of crime suffer.The original bill dealt with the obvious injustice but it had a sunset clause. The reason it had that sunset clause was that it was expected that there would be a review of just that situation and of just those principles that I have articulated on the basis that there might be a more coherent and comprehensive approach taken to victims’ rights including the ability to be compensated for loss other than that compensated for by accident compensation.Simply rolling over the existing legislation with no change leaves the same contradictions in place and leaves a still unsatisfactory situation in place. It still means that only those victims who have perpetrators who themselves are subject to a compensable act get access to any compensation—it is only by chance or by lottery and that is not satisfactory.What we still continue to need is a coherent and comprehensive approach to victims’ rights. The best that the Minister of Justice can do and she made the announcementtoday is to continue and reheat existing policies. This afternoon she made an announcement that the extra money that is collected through the offender levy the $50 that is levied on convicted offenders will be passed on for the benefit of various victims programmes. Well that is the intention of the levy and so the announcement that the Minister has made today in her attempt to dress it up as some sort of enhancement of victims’ rights is nothing of the sort.Hon David Parker: And it’ll probably reduce the fines.ANDREW LITTLE: If anything we will see a reduction in fines because of other measures being taken in the justice area such as the reduction in funding for Crown solicitors fewer prosecutions fewer charges taken and therefore less collected through fines and therefore less levied on offenders. It is contradictory.What we saw this afternoon in the announcement was the same old mutton dressed up as lamb and that in combination with this legislation means we still have an unsatisfactory situation when it comes to victims’ rights. The announcement this afternoon was for $750000 to go to victims as the additional amount that is already being collected through the offender levy. It will affect 4000 victims but there are thousands upon thousands of victims each year many of whom go uncompensated as a result. So this issue still needs to be addressed.I should put on the record yet again in this third reading that one of the objections we have to the bill notwithstanding that we will vote for it is that the Minister promised that all Opposition parties would be consulted on a more comprehensive approach to the issues that this bill covers. That never happened. That was a promise broken. How unfortunate. As we had promises of consultation over MMP so we had promises of consultation over this. In both cases the promises were broken. The Minister’s word stands for nothing.This legislation has its origins in the previous Labour Government and it dealt with an obvious situation an obvious injustice. If this bill were not in place the small sliver of injustice that would remain would still be there and we want to cover off at least that level of injustice and so we will continue to support the bill for that reason. But it is not satisfactory that several years after the original bill was put in place there does not appear to have been any comprehensive work done by the Minister or successive Ministers of Justice under this Government or the ministry they have presided over on developing options for a better approach a more comprehensive approach to victims’ rights. That is important.We should deal with victims’ rights aside from apart from and separately from the way we deal with our penal regime and our system of punishment for offenders. Let us call offenders those who are antisocial and those who do bad towards others in our community properly to account through our criminal justice system. Let us have a criminal justice system that provides appropriate levels of punishment but also aims to rehabilitate and restore people to good character and a constructive role in society. But let us also recognise that there are victims of crime and their issues need to be dealt with too through effective voice through effective support and where required through effective compensation. None of the measures put in place including those in this bill gets us anywhere closer to a better system a better regime of looking after victims of crime whether serious or non-serious crime. That is a situation that must change.The fact that the present Minister has taken no effort to talk to other parties about a new approach about different approaches and about a new way forward tells us very clearly that this Minister and this Government are not serious about new measures to deal with victims. It is about dressing up and reheating old half-baked ideas and taking the issue no further. We need better progress and we need a better approach. In thewords of the New Zealand Law Society when it submitted on other legislation when it comes to criminal justice it is better to have a cross-party approach to it. Those discussions will begin one day and we look forward to that but they will begin under a different Government a new Government a Labour-led Government that wants to take victims’ rights seriously—one thing that simply reheating the present legislation does not do.