Hipkins Chris: Returning Offenders (Management and Information) Bill — First Reading Second Reading In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeHipkins Chris: Returning Offenders (Management and Information) Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee[Sitting date: 17 November 2015. Volume:710;Page:8073. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]CHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka): Normally in this part of a Committee stage debate we would have the opportunity to reflect on comments that submitters to the select committee had made and so on. Many of the things that we would reflect on at this point in the proceedings would be whether the bill is going to meet the stated purpose; whether there were other options that were not considered that should have been; whether in fact there are parts of the bill that do not address some of the issues that it purports to address; and whether there are in fact gaps in the legislation. Of course our ability to do that comprehensively and thoroughly is somewhat constrained in this instance because the bill has not been to a select committee. It has had its first and second readings already today and it will probably be passed into law if not tonight then certainly at some point tomorrow. Therefore we have to I guess guess at what people might have said when they were submitting and try to identify the gaps in the legislation within a very short and constrained period of time.The first thing that leaps out at me in reading through the legislation is one of the big gaps for me and that is if the purpose of this bill is to identify people who will be at risk of reoffending when they are deported to New Zealand the first question that I have is not about whether we should be fingerprinting them and all of those things which the bill adequately deals with; it is about what this bill does about reintegration and support within the community for people who have offended whilst in Australia for people whose base is primarily in Australia—or another country because of course this bill is not specific only to Australia. There is nothing in the bill that deals to that.Of course reintegration is one of the most important factors in preventing reoffending. Everybody who works within the corrections system will say that for a prisoner who has recently been released—and bear in mind the types of offenders whom we are talking about in this legislation have been released only within the last 6 months or so—the amount of support they get within the community during those critical first few months is actually a big factor in whether or not they are likely to go on and reoffend. There is very little in the bill that deals with that issue.The second part of the bill that leapt out at me was the fact that this requires the Department of Corrections to trigger things in the first place. There is nothing automatic about this. This requires the Department of Corrections to be on top of things and I have to say I have some real concerns given the recent performance of the Department of Corrections as to whether or not it is actually up to the job of doing that. We have seen huge issues and huge concerns raised about the performance of the Department of Corrections and yet we are now placing this enormous emphasis on it being the agency that would have to instigate any of these things to take place. That concerns me greatly.So we come back to the basic question which is: why are we here what are we trying to achieve and will this bill actually deliver on it? Our priority is and I am sure actually this is a shared priority across all of Parliament keeping New Zealanders safe—keeping New Zealanders safe and making sure that we are adequately monitoring and supporting people who have previously been sentenced to a term of imprisonment who are released into the community. We should not approach that differently if they have been released from a term of imprisonment in a different country from the way we would approach it if they had been released in New Zealand. That is a principle that I think we all support. The question is whether in fact this bill adequately addresses that.There are also questions that I have around the fairness of the way this legislation is being approached and the fairness of the way some of the people who find themselves subject to this might be treated. I have got questions about why the 6-month provision applies in the way that it does. As I said a moment ago this applies to people who have been released from prison within the last 6 months. What if it was 7 months? What if it was a serious offence that they were released from only 7 months ago? How does the 6-month time frame get arrived at? That is something that I would very much like to hear further feedback on.The purpose clause clause 3 which I want to turn my attention to makes it clear that these provisions apply only to someone who is “returning to New Zealand following a prison sentence of more than 1 year in an overseas jurisdiction.” I think that this is something that people at home would maybe get a little confused by given some of the recent rhetoric around that. So yes this bill would cover rapists and murderers absolutely but it is also going to cover a number of offenders who are much much lower down the scale of offending. Some you could even say would be deemed to be petty crimes although the phrase “petty crime” is something that I am hesitant to use because all crime is a crime at the end of the day.But these are people shoplifting for example—in some areas that would have a prison sentence of more than 1 year so someone could be deported back to New Zealand for shoplifting and they would fall within this category. There are probably some vehicular offences that may end up in this category as well and I think we should consider all of the range of offences that might be covered by this legislation and not simply say that the only people who are going to be covered by this are rapists murderers child sex offenders and so on. That is not the case. It is going to cover quite a spectrum of people and the response to the different levels of offending needs to be different. Again there is very scarce detail from the Government in the supporting material supplied around this bill for how that response will be different depending on the nature of the offending that has taken place.We are only on Part 1 now and I want to get into the substance of some of my wider concerns when we get to Part 2 which contains I think the operative clauses of this. But I do want to put on record just my general concern about the gaps in the legislation because simply collecting the information and bringing someone under the purview of the Department of Corrections actually really is just a fraction of the situation. I am far more interested in what the Government is going to do to support reintegration.If we are looking at people who have been living overseas for a long period of time they may have no roots in New Zealand whatsoever—no connection with the communities that they find themselves in. They will be isolated and in fact fingerprinting them even putting them under supervision is not going to change that unless they are supported. They are still going to be just as likely to reoffend even if they have had all their fingerprints taken and are being supervised. They are still just as likely to reoffend if they do not have the adequate support in place. I do not have any satisfaction or any evidence to suggest that the Government is truly prepared for that and truly has a plan in place for how to deal with that. Although the Labour Party is certainly supporting this legislation through—because we support the intent of the legislation which is to keep New Zealanders safe—let us not overlook the fact that this legislation has not had the scrutiny that it deserves and that it should in fact be more thoroughly examined.The final point that I want to make in this my first contribution to this debate and I hope to make many many more is I hope—Jacinda Ardern: Many?CHRIS HIPKINS: Oh many many more. I hope that this legislation will be re-examined in relatively short order. Whilst I can understand why the Government wants to progress this legislation with some urgency now because it has not dealt with the issue adequately up until now—it has known about this for a year and it has taken it that long to bring it to the House and therefore we have no choice but to progress it under urgency now—I hope that will not preclude it actually having a more thorough examination farther down the track. I hope that the House will be back reconsidering these matters with proper public scrutiny including a full select committee hearing so that we can actually make sure that we are doing the right thing and we are not just putting in place a knee-jerk reaction that will not do what it purports to do.