Little Andrew: Victims’ Orders Against Violent Offenders Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeLittle Andrew: Victims’ Orders Against Violent Offenders Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 18 June 2014. Volume:699;Page:18680. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]ANDREW LITTLE (Labour):I am pleased to take a call in this part of the proceedings on the Victims’ Orders Against Violent Offenders Bill. I begin by saying that in a week in which the nation has had its attention drawn to the horrific reality of domestic violence and sexual violence for this Committee finding solutions—real solutions long-term solutions—should be front and centre of what we do right now. As my colleague Phil Goff has said—and indeed Carol Beaumont as well—although this bill goes some of the way and provides a solution of sorts to the dreadful embarrassing shameful problem that this nation has it is still a half-hearted effort. More could be done. I am going to come to two particular provisions to illustrate what I think the remaining problems are with this bill.Carol Beaumont talked about the fact that this bill still requires the victim to take the initiative. It is a civil proceeding that the victim must initiate. For impecunious victims getting access to legal aid so they can make an application of this nature has got a lot harder under this Government. It is just harder to get legal aid. In the Budget that has just been handed down this Government under this Minister of Justice has put up this outrageous proposition where legal aid is cut by another $12 million—$5 million out of civil legal aid alone—and now with this legislation when this legislation is passed the people who are looking to it for protection are somehow going to have to find the means to make the applications to court. The reality is that most of them will have to do it off their own bat. They will have to represent themselves because getting legal aid will be too hard and many simply will not be able to afford a lawyer. So that gap remains and I expect that that gap will get only ever larger.But this bill also in the two types of orders that it creates—the temporary non-contact order which happens or is granted on a without-notice application and then the final non-contact order which is granted or at least processed on notice and is granted after a hearing—will require adequate and sufficient resources to be available in the registries of our courts up and down the country. The reality is after the shameful act of cutting our legal aid the next most shameful thing that this Government has done under this Minister of Justice and her Minister for Courts is to gut the court registries of this country and put huge pressure on the remaining staff who are there to process applications. That pressure is only ever going to grow under pieces of legislation like this.I frankly despair at the thought and the prospect of victims of violent offending violent sexual offending and domestic violence when they are able to collect themselves process what has happened to them and start to take control of their lives then having to go through this process most likely at their own expense and deal with court registry staff who are under so much pressure and are probably unlikely to give them a lot of help. That is the justice system that we are developing under this Government and it is shameful. We have a Minister of Justice who is happy to swan around London mince around with Angelina Jolie photobomb Brad Pitt and talk longingly about protecting the victims of sexual violence in war zones but she cannot do enough for the good citizens of New Zealand and those who are in the unfortunate position of being victims of that sort of offending back here. Well we deserve better. The people of New Zealand deserve better.I want to talk about just a couple of provisions here because my colleagues Phil Goff and Carol Beaumont have talked about the bill. First of all I want to point out clause 15 “Discharge of non-contact order on application”. That allows an application for discharge to be made by a person against whom an order was made which could be the offender or an associate according to the bill “at any time”. An application for discharge can be made at any time. So no sooner is an order issued from the court with the victim having taken the initiative and gone to their own expense and negotiated and navigated their way through an under-resourced court registry the offender against whom the order is made can then at any time apply for a discharge. There is no constraint on that at all—no limitation on the offender no requirement that the order is in place for a limited period of time. You would have thought that at least for orders made on notice where there has been a hearing and the court has heard from the offender or at least from the subject of the order there must surely be a minimum time for the order to apply before an application for discharge can be made. But that provision opens it up for the offender to harass the victim in other ways by applying for the discharge.Then I want to turn to clause 15B which allows the offender of course once an application has been made to require a hearing to take place. In terms of principles of justice I do not have a problem with that—I do not have a problem with that. But where I am concerned is where the registrar of the court then takes on a number of responsibilities. The registrar can take the application for a hearing set it down and in the subsequent clauses of the bill it is the registrar who can take the responsibility for explaining the impact and the consequences of one of these orders to a person against whom an order is made.I go back to my earlier point that the resources of our court registries particularly the District Court where these applications will be made are stressed beyond belief right now. The court registry staff are just absolutely under the hammer. You have only got to talk to some of them to find out that that pressure is unrelenting because this Government has said “We must squeeze more out of you. You must work harder.” We have got court registry staff not just working late on weekdays but now coming in on weekends just to catch up with the work they are doing particularly in relation to civil applications because they are often the most complex ones to process and to work out who has to be served with what what has to go to which court official and all the rest of it. The court registry staff in this country are under unreasonable and unremitting pressure because of this Government. When this bill gets passed they will be under even greater pressure and they will be required to deal with distressed people and it is just unreasonable.Mr King may think it is funny. Mr King may think that we should cut short this discussion and this debate on this very important issue. Maybe the National Party members really just do not care about the victims of this sort of abuse and the importance of these sorts of orders because to look at them to hear the Minister of Justice and look at her actions which frankly speak louder than words you would think they do not give a toss—they do not give a toss. That is why we have this bill in this form.I want to echo my colleague Phil Goff’s comments that it is well time well overdue for this country to have a comprehensive piece of victims’ legislation setting out rights and allowing victims to look to the State to afford them the protection that the criminal justice system ought properly to offer them. It is not enough to rely on victims to take the initiative in their distressed state to protect themselves. That is what this bill does. It is time we had a new set of principles so that victims can look to the State and the courts to provide them with proper protection at all stages of the criminal justice system. There is no reason in principle why the orders that are contemplated in this bill could not be part of either the sentencing process or the parole process so that the victim does not have to take on the burden of that responsibility yet again.As my colleagues have said we will support this bill because as is often the case something is better than nothing. But the people of this country are fast demanding something a lot better and it is the Labour Party in Government that will deliver it because this Government has shown in 6 years that it is not up to the task. It really does not care about victims and it is not doing enough.The question was put that the following amendments in the name of Hon Judith Collins to Part 2 be agreed to:add to clause 13A the following subclause:(2)On the hearing of an application made under subsection (1) the court may if it thinks fit vary any condition or direction imposed under section 11(2) in respect of a temporary non-contact order.;insert in clause 14(2) the following paragraph:(ab)vary or discharge a condition or direction imposed under section 11A(2):;in clause 20(2)(b) replace “2009” with “2014”; andin clause 20(3) replace “2009” with “2014”.Amendments agreed to.Part 2 as amended agreed to.