Pillay Lynne: Sentencing (Offender Levy) Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
Pillay Lynne: Sentencing (Offender Levy) Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
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LYNNE PILLAY (Labour) 
: 
 I am very pleased to talk about Labour’s support for the bill. Labour is supporting the bill but doing so with some reservations. I know that Chester Borrows will be thinking that Lynne Pillay is going to bring up the Sentencing Council again—and yes I will. My colleague Charles Chauvel will also probably take a call and mention that. 
But I start by acknowledging the Law Commission. A year ago to the day it released a very comprehensive report on compensation for crime victims. The commission while acknowledging the role of the Accident Compensation Corporation (ACC) considered a variety of ways to make compensation and made some comments on the remedy we are talking about today. Labour is not opposing this bill but we do believe that it does very little— 
Simon Bridges 
: You’re quibbling. 
LYNNE PILLAY 
: I am not quibbling. 
Simon Bridges 
: You’re supporting it but also speaking against it. 
LYNNE PILLAY 
: That is pretty rich coming from that side of the House but we will not go there. Labour is supporting this bill and I will tell members why. We had an open mind and supported the bill going to the Justice and Electoral Committee. Submitters to that committee were in support of the bill and indeed many shared our view about it. I think it was the National Council of Women that agreed with the bill in principle—and I do not think that anyone in this House would oppose any form of compensation for victims—but the council raised a concern very similar to ours about the cost of administering the levy and the bureaucracy associated with its collection. That issue was very much a concern of the National Council of Women and a number of other submitters also raised that but we could not oppose the principle about enhanced support for victims of crime. We intend to monitor very closely how this legislation will work in effect. We are confident that the bill will be passed not because it is the best remedy—we know that that is not the case—but because it provides support for victims of crime. 
I acknowledge that Simon Power talked about the advantages of this bill but what I and Labour do not want to happen is to have unrealistic expectations raised. We note that the levy will be further down the pecking order if I can use that term after reparation. But the concern we raised—and we talked quite a bit about it in the select committee with submitters—is whether the levy will still have some effect if we are dealing with an offender and there is limited resource and even whilst reparation will be taken into account first. The levy will be non-negotiable and will be applied to all offenders. If we look at it quite realistically and considering that the more serious the crime the longer the sentence we know therefore that it will be longer before the levy is required to be paid. Ironically the worse the criminals’ records are for making payments the less likely it is that they will have to pay them. I think those concerns were raised by the Law Commission in its review. I note that the commission did not see that this levy was the best way forward mainly because of the cost. 
I will just talk a little bit about the cost. The claim was that the scheme would raise about $5 million a year for victims and then the Government was forced to scale back that prediction to $13.6 million over the first 4 years. That is a substantial scale back. Then other things are subtracted and that is the area of concern that we had. It is to do with subtracting the costs to set up the levy and to run the scheme which almost halves that amount for victims. We believe that probably if we were more realistic then it would have been more effective rather than having all this bureaucracy to give the money directly to that wonderful organisation Victim Support which has led the way in terms of support for victims of crime. But that was not to be. The purpose of the levy is enveloped in bureaucracy. 
Hon Simon Power 
: Watch this space Lynne! 
LYNNE PILLAY 
: We will see. We will be looking at how much of the $50 levy actually goes towards support for victims of crime. 
It would be remiss of me if I did not talk about ACC. In this House during question time earlier this afternoon we voiced our considerable concerns about ACC. One would have to say that it seems completely— 
Paul Quinn 
: Lynne! Lynne! 
LYNNE PILLAY 
: I tell that member to stop that; this is quite relevant to this bill thank you very much. It seems completely contradictory for the Government to pretend that this levy is about victims of crime whereas on the other side we have victims of very serious crime being dealt with under ACC. We have seen that through the sensitive claims unit of ACC. Probably the most compelling and heart-wrenching stories we could ever hear whether in this House or in our communities are about victims of crime and of sexual assault from their childhood yet we see those people being forced to jump through more hoops. There are much higher criteria and the goalposts are being raised for them to receive the support they so much deserve. It seems very very sad that this levy is being imposed with a very high cost of administration yet effective counselling through ACC really does help people and it is something they contribute to themselves when they are going through counselling. They receive a part payment from ACC but that payment is at risk. People’s rights to that are being cut and I see that as being very much at odds with what this bill is about. As I said we will be watching this scheme very carefully as it goes through. 
As I said before this scheme was at the cost of the Sentencing Council. That council would have done a lot to give some real— 
David Garrett 
: Shorter sentences—that’s what would have happened. 
LYNNE PILLAY 
: Yes certainly from the peanut gallery we always have that chant about shorter sentences do we not? Those people think we will solve all the problems in our country if we put people away longer but we know that is not the case. The Sentencing Council would have brought about consistency of sentencing and a common sense approach to sentencing. The council was something that the Law Commission had put a lot of time energy and sensible advice into and it is very sad that it did not go ahead. I think that that consistency of sentencing would have delivered a lot to victims. Indeed when we had our inquiry into victims’ rights many submitters—and I can see Chester Borrows nodding his head in agreement—came and spoke to us about fairness and consistency in and understanding of the system. So that is a loss. 
In terms of this levy I hope that it will build on a number of progressions that happened under the Labour Government such as the Victims’ Rights Act 2002 the Sentencing Act 2002 and the campaign we launched in 2003 to trace those who owed money and to deal with the money raised by that—a considerable amount of money. 
I can see that the Assistant Speaker is saying it is time to let others have a say. We are very inclusive in this Chamber so I am happy to finish my speech now. Thank you.