Goff Phil: Parole Amendment Bill — Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeGoff Phil: Parole Amendment Bill — Third Reading[Sitting date: 17 February 2015. Volume:703;Page:1671. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon PHIL GOFF (Labour—Mt Roskill): I do not know about that being a great speech as interjected by the member Chris Bishop. I think Mr Bakshi should sack the researcher who carefully drafted those notes that he read out. I do so on the basisthat frankly they are factually incorrect. If the member looks at the facts he will read that crime in New Zealand has in fact been declining in the trend lines since the 1990s. If he looks at the facts—and I can help him with a little institutional memory because I was in Parliament over that period of time—the major pieces of reform of legislation in this area were conducted under the last Government: the Parole Act the Sentencing Act. The very Act that this Parole Amendment Bill amends halved the rate of reoffending of people on parole. If the member does not believe me read the regulatory impact statement in the bill on the Table. It tells him that. The Parole Act toughened the legislation. It said that safety must be the paramount consideration of the Parole Board and that the Parole Board should not take decisions that put the public at undue risk.I made those changes at a certain cost. The cost was that people who should not be released from prison were not released from prison and prison numbers went up. This bill—and I do not condemn it for that—will not increase the days spent in prison by any prisoner in any way at all. I support this bill. But please Mr Bakshi get the facts right. The changes in the prison system about rehabilitation about education about providing work and about dealing with drug and alcohol problems began in the first decade of the 21st century. And to give credit to this Government it continued them. But let us not bend the facts for political purposes.When I say that I want to take a moment to acknowledge as my colleague Jacinda Ardern did the passing of Cecelia Lashlie. She was a woman whom I hugely admired. She was passionate about what she did. She was utterly committed and dedicated. It was a way of life for her to do something to help the people who ended up in our prison system and to keep people out of the prison system. The thing that Cecelia Lashlie would have most condemned is the politicisation of law and order issues to score political points. That is what she deplored—that is what she deplored.Chris Bishop: Oh!Hon PHIL GOFF: Read what she wrote Mr Bishop. You will see for yourself. She looked at this from the eyes of a person who wanted to make life better for the individuals who ended up in the corrections system and so keep New Zealanders safe because she would address the causes of the offending not treat the symptoms. As we consider any piece of legislation like that we should keep her philosophy her principles and her values in mind. I pay tribute to her memory.We support the changes in this bill. We supported them in the first reading of the bill and through the select committee process and through subsequent readings. We support them because these are rational and sensible changes to make. The Parole Board to which we give responsibility to act under this legislation also supports the changes that are being made. It also made the point that if anything this will not extend the time people spend in prison but it may well reduce it. But it will do so on a rational basis.Parole is a controversial area. The Parole Board will make mistakesfrom time to time. It will make mistakes either because it does not have the full information it needs or simply because human behaviour is not always predictable in this area. But generally it will get it right. What was noticeable with the people who appeared before the Law and Order Committee on this bill was that everybody from the hard-liners on law and order—the Sensible Sentencing Trust—right down to people like Kim Workman from Rethinking Crime and Punishment said the Parole Board did a pretty good job.One of the things the Parole Board has remarked upon is that it was seeing people three four five times before it made the decision that the person was ready for release. And because in the original legislation we set the period of time for review by the Parole Board to no more than 12 months—which meant effectively that it would often be looking at the person every 11 months—the offenders were coming before the Parole Board without having completed their rehabilitation programmes. The offender the prison managers and the Parole Board would know that this was not the right time for their release. So this is not a hard-line law and order issue. This is simply saying let us give the Parole Board the flexibility to determine that maybe a person does not need to come before the Parole Board every 12 months; they may come before the Parole Board every 2 years initially. It gives the Parole Board the additional flexibility which I think is really sensible that if a person actually achieves their rehabilitation goals early then they can come before the Parole Board early and be released early.I know there are some people who say there should be no parole. From time to time—from the ACT Party and from the right wing of the National Party—we have had a preaching of these words: “Truth in sentencing. Let them serve to the last day of the sentence and then release them.” It sounds good in the electorate when people are concerned about law and order issues but what actually happens in practice is that it does not work. For a start you end up keeping the vast majority of people in prison who would not reoffend for longer than they need to be there and at a cost of over $90000 per prisoner per year. We are spending a hell of a lot of money to no good public purpose. If a person is ready to be released because they have shown remorse because they have acknowledged the causes of their offending and because they are unlikely to reoffend why would you keep them in prison until the last day of their sentence? It does not make sense at all.But there is another factor and it is this: when offenders are kept until the last day of their sentence and are then released the empirical evidence shows quite clearly that they are much more likely to reoffend. So what do you do? Do you release them from total confinement to total liberty? That is dumb; it is a really stupid thing to do. It increases the rate of reoffending. Or do you put them on parole where they have to report weekly to a probation officer where they are under the close supervision of a probation officer and where they can be directed as to where they live work and with whom they associate? That works and that is the system that we should sustain and this bill actually improves the way that system works. That is why the Labour Party is supporting it.The critical change as I mentioned is that the Parole Board now has the ability—the flexibility—to determine that there will be a wider space between parole hearings where appropriate. The Parole Board can also as I mentioned before bring forward parole hearings and the Parole Board can also issue postponement orders. Postponement orders allow it to extend the period between parole hearings to 5 years compared with the normal restriction of a 2-year period. But that will be done only when a prisoner is serving an indeterminate sentence—a life sentence or preventive detention—or when a person is on a determinate sentence but has more than 10 years in prison. Postponement orders will not be used frequently but they will be available as they were under the last Act but extended to that 5-year period.I think this bill strikes the balance between protection of the community and the rehabilitative needs of those who are in prison and the need for the community to be safe and a rational system that will cut down the number of parole hearings—not in a way that disadvantages the offender but in a way that is rational. I commend the bill to the House.Debate interrupted.