Worth Richard: Parole (Extended Supervision) and Sentencing Amendment Bill — Second Reading Instruction to Committee 
Worth Richard: Parole (Extended Supervision) and Sentencing Amendment Bill — Second Reading Instruction to Committee 
[Volume:618;Page:14142] 
RICHARD WORTH (National—Epsom) 
: 
 Would it not be great if we introduced a rule against the reading of speeches. The previous speaker read the speech well but in the reading of speeches I think we lose so much of what is an essential aspect of this House—that is unscripted comment on the merits or otherwise of particular pieces of legislation. 
National supports the Parole (Extended Supervision) and Sentencing Amendment Bill but it is important to say right from the outset that there are big differences in the law and order policies of the major parties. That is most vividly demonstrated by the change that Labour has made to the parole legislation. Members of the House will be aware that the position under this Government is that a person who is charged and convicted of rape and sentenced to a period of 9 years will be eligible for parole within a period of 3 years. And that surely cannot be right. It is fair to say that National judges Labour to be soft on law and order changes. 
 The piecemeal law changes of the current Minister of Justice have no strategic context or setting. They are reactive ad hoc measures and this is one of them. That is not to say that this is a bad measure but the Government is ignoring significant issues in the parole area and needs to proceed on the basis of a comprehensive and careful look at the laws relating to parole. I do not doubt that other speakers from my side of the House will take this issue further. 
National supports the Parole (Extended Supervision) and Sentencing Amendment Bill subject to qualifications that I and those National Party speakers who follow me will identify. What we are talking about here is the introduction of a new extended supervision regime that will actively manage the high-risk child sex offender. The concept behind the bill is that those child sex offenders who come within the bill’s definition of “eligible offender” will be assessed by the Department of Corrections to establish whether they are high-risk individuals and should be subject to an extended supervision order. 
What is really proposed is two separate management regimes. The first one is a standard management regime for medium-high and high-risk offenders similar to that used for offenders on parole and the second part of it is an intensive management regime for the highest-risk offenders which may require the use of home detention - like conditions and electronic monitoring. 
I am not sure how it is for other members of the House but I think it is fair to say that many of us were truly shocked by the revelations of Justice Ellis who holds a senior position on the Parole Board when he indicated what one would have to say was an abject lack of knowledge of the way the parole system works. I express the hope that those who follow Justice Ellis in this important position and the other members of the Parole Board get to grips with what is a significant problem in the oversight and supervision of those people who have the privilege—and it is a privilege in the context of early release—of parole. It seems to be the case that the oversight and supervision given by the probation service is minimal and it is fair to say in some cases extremely minimal. The consequence of that of course is that the chance of reoffending is incredibly high. 
The New Zealand Government in what it has done in connection with this bill is not really breaking new ground. It is in fact taking an approach that has been followed by overseas jurisdictions in respect of child sex offenders. It is the reality that the prevalence and the nature of the offending and reoffending against a particularly vulnerable group in society—children—has led other jurisdictions to put in place similar measures. To prove that point I really need only instance what has gone on in Canada and the UK because those countries have created legislation to extend supervision regimes for high-risk offenders including child sex offenders. 
In 1997 for example the Criminal Code of Canada was amended to allow the court to impose a term of up to 10 years of community supervision following a prison sentence of 2 years or more. In the United Kingdom the relevant statute which is the Powers of Criminal Courts (Sentencing) Act 2000 allows the court to extend the custodial sentence of eligible offenders by imposing a long-term supervision order of up to 10 years. 
So who are these eligible offenders? One only needs to look through the provisions in the Crimes Act to see that we are talking about a group of offenders who in the worst possible way degrade our children. The relevant offences for an extended supervision order include these sorts of things: indecency with a boy or girl under 12 sexual intercourse and attempted sexual intercourse with a girl under 12 sexual intercourse and indecency with a girl aged 12 to 16 organising and promoting child sex tours and where the victim is under the age of 16 years at the time of the offence there is an extended definition to pick up issues like anal intercourse incest sexual violation and attempt to commit sexual violation. 
There is a critical gap in the present legislation which is the reason National supports this bill in the ability to manage certain child sex offenders in the community. The gap is that there is currently no ability to monitor or supervise in the community those offenders subject to a finite prison term once they are no longer subject to release conditions or eligible for recall from parole. So it was that the Government decided to introduce an extended supervision regime that would enable the management and also the monitoring of child sex offenders in the community beyond the end of their current parole or release conditions. 
I would like to say something about child sex offenders in the short time that remains. First of all child sex offenders are not a homogenous population. There is considerable diversity in this group in socio-economic background education age ethnicity the psychosocial and psychosexual background the sexual interest in children the relationships with victims and general criminality. One of the issues that the Justice and Electoral Committee determined after hearing evidence is that it was possible to identify the types of factors that increased the risk of reoffending among child sex offenders. It is a statement of the obvious that what we are on about here is the aspect of reoffending because—and I am sure this may be developed by later speakers perhaps by myself as well—we are talking about on one view of it a significant infringement of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act in this legislation. But I am also saying—and others are also I am sure—that this is one of those cases where it is justifiable to overlook those provisions of that Act because of greater societal interests.