Logie Jan: Victims’ Orders Against Violent Offenders Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeLogie Jan: Victims’ Orders Against Violent Offenders Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 16 April 2014. Volume:698;Page:17379. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]JAN LOGIE (Green):Tēnā koe Mr Chair. I cannot help but rise in response to the Associate Minister of Justice’s speech. Thank you Minister for acknowledging thevery low conviction rate we have for sexual violence in New Zealand. I would like to acknowledge that it is the most conversational I have seen the Committee and I think it is the character of the Minister in the chair and I appreciate it.Hon Phil Goff: He’d make a good Minister of Justice wouldn’t he?JAN LOGIE: Yes he would.Hon Phil Goff: And he could recognise a conflict of interest and be honest about it.JAN LOGIE: Well I am not going to go there Mr Goff. I am going to stick to the positive issues at the moment. I do want to acknowledge the Minister for acknowledging that low conviction rate and the low reporting rate. I want to pick up on that point and recognise that this bill is part of a much wider piece of work and thinking which we need to be doing as a country in terms of what we need to do to improve reporting rates and disclosure rates.I would note the Law Commission’s work which hundreds of New Zealanders submitted on on this very point around how we could change our pre-trial systems and trial systems to improve the conviction rate—and my utter utter disappointment in that being taken off the work agenda for the Law Commission before it was able to be completed and after hundreds of New Zealanders had submitted ideas. There were very high levels of agreement around some of the points and recommendations within that report—for example having the victims’ support workers being available to victims when they first disclose at the police station rather than just on the day of the trial and to have advice and to have an agency brought in so that a victim is aware of their options at that first stage. There is a whole range of things in that commission report that would provide us with a pathway to improving those reporting rates. When we are looking only at answers like the Victims’ Orders Against Violent Offenders Bill which are important but are after the fact I think we are not doing our best.I think we can certainly do a lot better and we have been hearing through the Inquiry into the Funding of Specialist Sexual Violence Social Services which again I thank all parties in this House for supporting. A number of those services have been bringing up concerns regarding the justice process. How harrowing that is the need for support systems and for them to be funded to walk through that process with survivors—they do not have that capacity at the moment—and to be able to be there with people afterwards. So we do have a lot of work to do in this country and this bill is a very small part of the puzzle. That is not to dismiss anything that is positive. We have got to support all of the positive initiatives but really it would be great to have a far more comprehensive view where we could all come together based on the best evidence and the community’s experiences and really really get a handle on changing our culture and making sure that all the victims and survivors are properly supported.Part 1 agreed to.