Nash StuartSTUART NASH (Labour—Napier): Of course we support this bill. Anything that keeps communities safe we are obviously going to support.First of all let us go through the problem definition and how this came about. We know that in November 2014 a prisoner serving a life sentence for murder—he was a convicted paedophile—escaped New Zealand while on a temporary work release from prison and he was arrested in Brazil and was returned to New Zealand. People say this man was intelligent but I think he was as thick as two short planks. Anyone who gets arrested in Brazil—there is something terribly wrong with their plan. I think his arrogance was his undoing which had sort of characterised his whole life. So let us not say that this man was intelligent because he was anything but. In fact he was a predator who should be—you know. Anyway let us leave it at that.The other thing is that the Privacy Act meant that it was very difficult—well the Privacy Act determines how agencies collect and store data what they can share etc. The Privacy Act at this point did not allow a sufficient level of sharing to optimise keeping the police and other agencies well informed so that was changed. The other thing of course is that there are legislative and technical barriers that hinder information sharing. So what this bill does is it looks to rectify the situation that allowed someone like the gentleman we have mentioned to escape.I suppose the concern I have—and like I said do not get me wrong; I am completely supporting this bill—is that when I looked at the original regulatory impact statement it highlighted a number of issues. The first one was that the Ministry of Justice had limited opportunities for detailed agency consultation. What it actually said—this is the Ministry of Justice—is: We have not had sufficient time to collect definitive information from agencies regarding their information needs but we have worked closely enough with key agencies to gain clarity for the purposes of designing a legislative mechanism." It said it had been unable to consult with the Privacy Commissioner. It said that the scope of change for the purposes of the analysis was restricted to identity verification. It said the Smith/Traynor review made useful evidence available but its scope was limited. It also said it had not been able to assess the definitive fiscal cost that may result from the options.Now the reason I point this out is—one of the reasons of course a bill goes to select committee is that it allows experts or just Kiwis who have an interest in this to submit in front of MPs and make sure that the bill that goes through first reading can then be brought up to speed at the select committee process. But I think we run a bit of a risk if what we do is sort of say "OK we have had an issue here. The Minister has investigated; she's come out with 39 recommendations. We must rush this through." It is a little bit knee-jerk I suppose and it is a shame that after 9 years it actually took a serious incident for this sort of bill to be drafted.I mean we understood the issues. We know the problems. It might have been highlighted by a particular case but these existed for a long time. And I think we have got to be really careful—and this Government is pretty bad at it—that we do not write legislation in a knee-jerk fashion. When I read the regulatory impact statement I sort of got the impression that that might have happened. But luckily there was a good select committee that it went through the Law and Order Committee and I think the bill is now up to scratch and it will achieve the purposes that it was supposed to achieve.We do acknowledge that the systems surrounding offender and prisoner management needed amending and updating. The key parts of the bill are common sense—changes that will allow Government departments to better share information. And I suspect that a lot of New Zealanders did not realise that in fact these agencies could not share information in the first place. I mean we understand the role of the Privacy Commissioner and we definitely know that information has to be kept private because if it is shared for nefarious means—or any other means—then it could end up creating unintended consequences and we certainly do not want that.But what we do want I think—and what we require—which of course this bill addresses is for agencies to be able to share information that will (a) allow them to their job better and (b) allow us to make sure that our communities are safe. And this bill does address that.The inquiry actually into the escape of the man whose name I shall not mention did show a chain of failures by Government departments. And a lot of those actually could have been—I mean my understanding of the incident report into this is that a simple telephone call could have in fact prevented this. So whilst this bill puts a lot of checks and balances in place to make sure this does not happen again we also need to understand that those who are responsible for implementing this—the men and women on the front line—actually understand the processes and they are following them in a way that is robust and retains the integrity of our prison system and our court system and our other agencies that deal with these sorts of characters.The inquiry into this chap's escape did show that the levels of vigilance and communication could have been a lot better. Now you cannot legislate for that; you really cannot. If the people are not talking to each other or agencies are not talking to each other or communicating even though the processes and procedures are there then this is not going to stop this. One thing that we do need to know—and I do admit I was not on the select committee so I am assuming this has been communicated—is that there is a set of procedures in place and the staff who are responsible for implementing these procedures do need to understand what their roles are when a prisoner is out on for example work release etc. etc.I mean my understanding is the victim of the crime was not even notified that this chap was on work release or had escaped. There were no comprehensive systems in place where the Department of Internal Affairs was supplied with information about New Zealanders not allowed to leave the country. It did note that the police deal with the information they have got in front of them but we do know that often these criminals will change their name simply to avoid the sorts of checks we are talking about. So again this needs to be flagged with the Department of Internal Affairs and the Police and Corrections at the appropriate time and as soon as is practicable so we are not just dealing with a John Smith or a Clive Smith or whoever; we are actually dealing with the person whom Births Deaths and Marriages has information on.Corrections noted that it had strong inadequacies in the way that it administered temporary release. I suspect that this chap has now had to spend a lot of time in solitary confinement not because he was a bad boy and ran away to Brazil but simply because a lot of temporary releases were cancelled at the time. The prisoners who were actually using these or were on temporary release for the right reasons i.e. integrating them back into the community which is what we want—there is no doubt about that—had their temporary releases cancelled. I think that was probably a bad thing; there is no doubt about that.So what I would just say to sum up is that we do support this. We support anything that keeps our communities safe and we support any bill or any measure that actually allows our various agencies to communicate in a way that is meaningful that drives efficiencies and most importantly once again keeps our communities safe. Thank you very much."