Clendon David: Prisoners’ and Victims’ Claims (2012 Expiry and Application Dates) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Clendon David: Prisoners’ and Victims’ Claims (2012 Expiry and Application Dates) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Sitting date: 02 May 2012. Volume:679;Page:1895. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
DAVID CLENDON (Green) 
: 
 Kia ora koutou. The first look at this bill the Prisoners’ and Victims’ Claims (2012 Expiry and Application Dates) Amendment Bill brought on a bit of a case of  
Groundhog Day 
. This bill to my count is something like the fifth or sixth piece of legislation we have seen in recent years with the heading of “Prisoners’ and Victims’ ” none of which unfortunately have really generated better outcomes than we might otherwise have had. We believe that this House is once again devoting its very expensive time and resource to what is essentially and has been from day one an ill-conceived piece of legislation. We are now seeking to extend the life of this legislation despite the quantitative and qualitative evidence that it has done very little good over the intervening 7 or 8 years and in fact has considerable potential to do harm.  
The intention of the original piece of legislation was to compensate victims of crimes to ensure that if the perpetrators of crime came upon a windfall or some return as a result of claims against the Crown victims would be compensated. I would hazard a guess that the amount of money that has been returned to victims as a result of this legislation is significantly less than the cost associated with the initial primary legislation and the numerous amendments to it. It has been a hopelessly ineffective piece of legislation and we think it ought to end now.  
In the 2010 debate that brought us to this 2012 deadline—which I remind the House was conducted under urgency nearly 2 years ago—I asked the then Minister of Justice what actual sums of money had been returned to victims and how many people had directly benefited as a result of the legislation. To his credit the Minister in the Committee stage gave us the answer and told us that a total of $25000 had been awarded to victims as reparations. A total of four victims had received a total sum of $38000 collectively. So in fact the first 5 years of this Act returned $65000 in total—a drop in anybody’s bucket. It has not been effective. That is an extraordinarily small amount of money and I suspect there has been very little added to it in the 18 months or 2 years just gone by.  
The Minister in her presentation of this bill stressed the importance of getting this through the House quickly and gave us effectively a deadline at the Justice and Electoral Committee of 11 June. She is concerned that otherwise a window will open that would presumably enable prisoners to enjoy the benefit of any reparations they were paid. I remind the Minister that this bill really kicks in only if prisoners are abused while they are in the care and custody of the State. The easy way to ensure there are no further opportunities for prisoners to benefit presumably is to ensure that there is no abuse of prisoners while they are in the custody of the State.  
The Greens opposed this legislation—the Prisoners’ and Victims’ Claims Bill as it was then—prior to 2005 because we saw then it would lead to a reduction in the respect for human rights. We said at the time that it was likely to be ineffectual and this is now proven to be the case. It had very few redeeming features at the time. We did support the bill. We were persuaded at the time to support the primary legislation that we are seeking to amend. We did that on a promise that there would be a major reassessment a significant review a complete overhaul of all legislation and that some real attention would be paid to assuring victims’ rights and putting in place some structural procedures and elements that would ensure that people who suffer crime—the victims of crimes—are properly compensated and recognised. Sadly that has not occurred over time; instead we are continuing to perpetuate this piece of legislation. That is a classic example of a Government—in fact two Governments—pretending to do something creating the illusion or artifice of doing something positive for victims but in fact doing very little at all.  
This is a very convoluted piece of primary legislation. Effectively the Act denies prisoners the possibility of redress for wrongs done. The only way that victims of crime can benefit through this is if a prisoner or an inmate under the control of the State either has a windfall or more likely gets some recompense for their rights being abused. It is a very peculiar and very perverse model and we would be better to simply remove it from the book. Let us have a little bit of confidence in the Department of Corrections in 2012 that it will not create situations that will enable prisoners to make claims of having been abused that a court would see merit in and would enable them to have some reparation paid to them.  
I recall the genesis of the primary legislation that this bill amends and the so-called behaviour management regime that was occurring. Inmates were suffering abuse tantamount to torture under the so-called behaviour management regime at Mt Eden Prison. One concedes they were serious high-end offenders. They were not nice people but the State nevertheless has an absolute responsibility to respect the basic human rights of people who are in custody—even offenders even prisoners. They remain humans they remain citizens of this country and they are entitled to the protection of their human rights. At the time that the primary legislation was passed a now departed member of this House to his discredit referred to payments made under legal claims against the behaviour management regime as effectively a golden handshake for inmates. That is so far from the truth. That set us on this very long-winded path with multiple amendments that has brought us to this situation now. This Act has not worked for victims. It has not worked for prisoners. We should simply let it fall and as I said trust the Department of Corrections not to get it wrong.  
There are so many things we could be doing to change the corrections regime: the way we deal with offenders the way we deal with victims the way we manage our prisons and our prisoners. There is currently a piece of legislation the Corrections Amendment Bill before this House that does have some positive features. It does propose some efficiencies in practice and some administrative tweaks to management but also it unfortunately contains some major steps towards further abuse of human rights and further denials of basic human rights and it will remove us even further from our national our legal and indeed our international obligations.  
It is worth recalling that when the primary legislation was put in place it was many of the non-governmental organisations—the organisations dedicated to protecting human rights—that opposed the legislation perhaps surprisingly. But they saw through it. They understood very well that what was called for was not some grandstanding piece of legislation that appeared to be producing some benefits and some results for victims but a serious ground-up community-led I would suggest assessment of what is needed to do the best by the victims of crimes and indeed to look at how best we can ensure that we reduce the number of victims of crime.  
It is clear that over the past decade or more there was a struggle between the two main parties. There was a battle and neither was willing to concede an inch. There was this fear of being seen to be soft on crime allegedly responding to a sense within New Zealand society that we wanted to punish people who offended. Actually there is very little evidence that New Zealand is a punitive society. There were some TV polls done in 2006 that indicated a preference for community-based sentences. Colin James who is not known as one of the more wide-eyed radical dumb commentators or journalists in New Zealand commented recently that a number of organisations have perceived a much more broad-based interest in looking for alternatives to prison looking for alternatives to incarceration and looking for alternatives to the so-called tough on crime approach. Last night I was pleased to be at the launch of JustSpeak a group of young people who are committed to doing better to seeing improvements in our corrections regimes particularly in our management of victims and our management of offenders.  
We can do a great deal better than this. By perpetuating this bill for another 12 months we are simply perpetuating a failed model a flawed model—an approach that we know is incredibly expensive at a time when we are stretched financially. It has not worked it will not work and the Greens will continue to oppose it. Thank you.