Franks Stephen: Budget Debate 
Franks Stephen: Budget Debate 
[Volume:618;Page:13729] 
STEPHEN FRANKS (ACT) 
: 
 I have a proposal to save the Government $6 million next year and literally hundreds of millions of dollars in the years after. An amount of $6 million has been set aside to run the Parole Board and $6 million happens to be what the typical serious offender costs this community over a lifetime. The Department of Corrections statement of intent shows that the average chronic offender costs the community half a million dollars in crime costs in the 5 years after he or she is released. 
Members should do the calculation but before they do I want to talk about an experience I had on Monday of this week. I went before the Parole Board with Mrs Belinda Reaney. Mrs Reaney’s 7-year-old son was slaughtered in his bed by a naked man chanting “Kill a Pakeha.” It was not very long ago—in her mind it seems like yesterday. Yet in 2002 she had to front up to the Parole Board to try to persuade it that a sentence of 10 years was not enough for Anthony Roma. She and her husband failed. 
Their good friend Graham Pedler wrote a short letter to the Parole Board explaining that the board’s conditions of abstaining from drugs and alcohol and having family support were fanciful. He said: “I wish to put you on notice that I believe Anthony Roma will reoffend while on parole.” He was out of prison for only a few months when he sexually attacked someone in a park. 
So the Parole Board was quite respectful to us on Monday. Its members were not looking very smug as they admitted that they had no idea what was meant by “undue risk to the safety of the community” when we asked what “undue” was. The board members were not supercilious like Minister of Justice Phil Goff and the Labour members opposite when they admitted that they did not know what “the rights of the victims” meant where that is referred to in the Act. They are troubled by the jurisdiction they have. They know that it is an awesome responsibility. They know that the risks they impose on the community are simple gambles simple guesses. They were at pains to say they have no alternative but to guess. 
So the board also acknowledged what we have known for 2 years and what Minister Goff has known since he first made sure it was in the Parole Act that they are not even allowed to take account of the purposes of sentencing. This is a group of well-meaning people appointed at a cost of $6 million to let offenders out before their sentences end knowing that that will cost many millions more and they cannot even interpret their own Act. 
I suggested to them and I will suggest it again that they take a steer from the Minister of Justice on what “undue risk” might be. The Minister in this House on Tuesday told us what he thinks “undue risk” is. When he scoffed at the idea of allowing a nuclear-propelled ship into our ports the Minister said that an undue risk was any risk however negligible. No one has been hurt at any port in New Zealand or in the world by a nuclear-propelled ship but that was too much risk for the Minister of Justice Phil Goff wearing his foreign affairs hat. I ask Mr Goff why there is any early release whatsoever if that is the test. If yesterday it was too much of a risk to New Zealanders to allow nuclear propulsion which has never hurt anyone why should the Parole Board not apply that test when Mrs Reaney comes before it and asks: “Why are you considering Anthony Roma for release again?”. Why would anyone consider Anthony Roma for parole when he has never explained why he murdered a 7-year-old boy in his bed whom he had never met and why he then thought he should be entitled to be released into the community to do it again? 
Hon David Cunliffe 
: Sob stories are no substitute for substance. 
STEPHEN FRANKS 
: Mr Cunliffe says that it is a sob story and I see smirks from a number of members. I see Mr Cosgrove smirking as well. We do not think it is a smirking matter. When Mr Goff went into his vein-throbbing act on the risks from nuclear propulsion he pretended that no risk was worth running yet he imposes the risk that more than 1000 parolees two out of three will hurt or steal from other New Zealanders within 2 years. We know it and they know it and he asks the Parole Board to release them.