Fox Marama: Returning Offenders (Management and Information) Bill — First Reading Second Reading In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeFox Marama: Returning Offenders (Management and Information) Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee[Sitting date: 17 November 2015. Volume:710;Page:8087. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]MARAMA FOX (Co-Leader—Māori Party): I have been sitting here listening to the debate about the purpose of this bill. I find it a bit rich actually that the Opposition is pointing to the past 1 year. We could go back decades—decades actually—when successive Governments have done nothing about this. We have had people being deported out of Australia and back to New Zealand for decades.The major impact on increasing that number happened in 2001 under the Labour Government. I do not want to say “Oh it’s your fault and it’s your fault.” but actually a whole lot of impacts have happened on Australians—they consider themselves Australians but they are Kiwis who live there—since that immigration law change. Yes that has been ramped up since December last year when this new threshold came into force in Australia sending a whole lot of people back across the Tasman. But for the 1 year I have been in Parliament we have been talking about this since the time we walked into this Government. I know that the Māori Party has been raising this in the years it has been here but these issues go back a long long time and I am grateful actually that we are here doing something about it because we do need to protect the citizens of this country.One of the things—and there are many things—that I was very clear with the Minister about is that the Minister under this piece of legislation does not have the extraordinary powers that the immigration Minister in Australia has. He can deport people under the questionable character provisions and seal that record. He does not have to share that record with the Australian court or with the prosecutors or even with the person they are deporting back to New Zealand. So they may actually have some serious concerns that we are not even going to know about because that Government does not even share them with its own people let alone us. I find that abhorrent and I am grateful that we are doing something about it and that the Minister of Justice has not through this draft legislation—because frankly I would not agree to it otherwise—given herself extraordinary powers to further impact on the lives of these men and women who are coming back to us. We are picking up the pieces of their lives and we know that the purpose of this bill is narrow so that we can deal with the immediate concern now. And it may have been yes a year since it was implemented in Australia but it has been decades in this country that people have been deported back to us and successive Governments have done nothing.So I am grateful that we are doing something and that actually we have taken up with the Government that those other supports are going to be put in place and we have assurances that they are happening. We have examples of where that is already happening and that is the question here because we have tried for many years to ensure through programmes like the ones that are happening in prisons around the country now—Māori focus units and such—to ensure recidivism is reduced. We want to make sure that they come back into our society and we help them pick up the pieces of their lives that are further damaged by the Australian Government’s ignorance and their blatant disrespect for our country by imposing these laws on those Kiwis who are living there and we are picking up the pieces of those things.So I am over listening to those people talk about the length of time that it has taken because they did nothing when they were the Government and it is a bit rich to listen to that now. We are doing something now and I support the Minister in making this happen. And in fact those extraordinary powers of the immigration Minister in Australia to seal a record—it could be something but it could actually be nothing and we do not even get to know that. That is the disrespect that they pay to us and I am glad that we are going to deal with just the people who have committed those offences who in New Zealand would have conditions put around them to ensure the safety of our community.So yes although there are minor offences being caught up in this regime at the lower end of the threshold we have not excused the fact and the point that there are actually serious offenders who are coming back to New Zealand and we need to protect our country and our people and our society from the risk of reoffending. I want to get assurances and we have sought those assurances from the Government that other programmes will be put in place. But let us deal with the issue and the issue right now is to ensure that those parole conditions can continue in New Zealand because until this goes through they can come back here and we have no say. We had no monitoring before. We had no ability to ensure that a paedophile was not living in a home with children and not living—Jacinda Ardern: That’s actually not true. That’s not true.MARAMA FOX: Well you had the opportunity actually. You had the opportunity.