Alexander Marc: Prisoners' and Victims' Claims Bill — Instruction to Committee In Committee 
Alexander Marc: Prisoners' and Victims' Claims Bill — Instruction to Committee In Committee 
[Volume:626;Page:20927] 
MARC ALEXANDER (United Future) 
: 
 I rise on behalf of United Future to debate this important bill which has been hastily put before Parliament and hastily put before the people of New Zealand as an affront to all victims up and down the country. This bill started out with a reasoned proposition which was: how do we stop prevent or circumvent the very real possibility that inmates can have any access to any compensation at all? Everybody who took part in the select committee process wanted to see a way around that. We heard time and time again from victims who made the effort to come to the Justice and Electoral Committee. By coming to the committee they had to relive their own victimhood sometimes with broken stories about their lives at the other end of very serious offending. They told us they want no part of an ongoing relationship financial or otherwise with inmates. Yet this bill forces them to do just that. 
Victims do not want to see the perpetrators of violent crimes against them profit from going to prison as a result those crimes. That is clear for all to see. I noticed in the  
New Zealand Herald 
 newspaper today a headline that states: “Appeal Court warns that prisoner compo being ‘embarrassing’ is no reason to reject it”. That is actually not true. The fact that it is embarrassing is every reason to reject it. It is embarrassing on behalf of victims it is embarrassing on behalf of anybody who pretends to feel for justice in this country and it is embarrassing that a person can profit from committing violence against another person. Nobody including the victims wants to have barbarity in prisons but there is a helluva difference between recognising those who perpetrate a barbarity in prison—the prison guards—and holding them to account for what they have done and allowing the inmates to profit as a result of crime which is what landed them in prison in the first place. It is an affront to victims in this country. 
We thought that everybody had an open mind as to how to deal with this issue and I understand the problems the Government had. The Minister of Justice also has the problem of being the Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade. He thinks he has to uphold international accords that contradict the imperatives of our own sense of justice in our own country. So I understand the predicament the Government is in even though I disagree with it—and there will be more on that later on as the debate progresses—but it is utterly scurrilous to have the Greens tails between their legs scurrying along to try to find national relevance because they are irrelevant. They always have been irrelevant especially over the last 3 years and they are irrelevant now. They are not fighting on behalf of victims in this country; they have turned their backs on those victims. They are in favour of the offenders and the support they now show for this bill clearly shows that. They are in favour of offenders over the interests of victims. Their true colours are there for everyone to see. 
Mr Tanczos can sit there and grin or laugh at the plight of victims up and down this country but he fails to understand the fact that through this bill inmates will still be able to collect some money and that is actually against the human rights of the victims. It hurts victims and it puts them in a more invidious position. If victims want to take money off those offenders they now have to enter into an economic and legal relationship to try to do that. What sense of justice is there for them? Why is it that the offenders against those victims can have recompense in money financial gain whereas the victims they offend against can have none? Accident compensation barely covers the costs of their wounds but there is nothing for the wounds that will go on for the rest of their lives and hurt their families and themselves. This bill is a travesty and the Greens are scurrilous dogs for supporting it. They are utterly irrelevant to justice. 
Nandor Tanczos 
: I raise a point of order Madam Chairperson. I am sure it must be out of order to call the Greens “scurrilous dogs”. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Ann Hartley) 
: That is out of order. Parties should be treated the same as members. The member will please withdraw and apologise. 
MARC ALEXANDER 
: I withdraw and apologise. In order for the big cheese of Labour to be able to put this bill this issue to rest Labour has the Greens scurrying along like mice to try to put the bill to bed. They will not; we will not let them.