Davis Kelvin: Returning Offenders (Management and Information) Bill — In Committee Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeDavis Kelvin: Returning Offenders (Management and Information) Bill — In Committee Third Reading[Sitting date: 17 November 2015. Volume:710;Page:8113. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]KELVIN DAVIS (Labour—Te Tai Tokerau): I would like to talk to clauses 16 through to 20 regarding returning prisoners. Clause 16 talks about who is a returning prisoner. Clause 17 outlines the criteria for determining that a person is a returning prisoner. Clause 18 talks about the time for the commissioner to determine that that person is a returning prisoner. Clause 19 states that “[t]he Commissioner must serve a written notice on a person (P) who has been determined to be a returning prisoner.” Clause 20 though describes what that determination notice must look like. It states that a “determination notice must—(a) state that the person named in the notice (P) has been determined by the Commissioner to be a returning prisoner for the purposes of this Act; and (b) state that P is subject to release conditions under this Act; and (c) state the period for which P is subject to release conditions;” and sets out the standard release conditions. It states that the person “must report to a probation officer at a probation officer at a probation service centre within 72 hours of service of the notice; and (f) provide information about how to contact a probation officer;” and so on and so forth.But what this does is actually neglect the actual human side of this situation. If we take for example the planeload of prisoners who we believe are arriving in the next day or so if they are prisoners who have come off Christmas Island let me tell you now that they will be traumatised they will be upset and they will be in shock as to what has happened to them over the last few days. They will come here. They will not have legal representation when they get here. They will have difficulty making sense of anything that the authorities throw at them such as this determination notice that they are a returning prisoner.We have got to remember that these are people who are coming under extraordinary circumstances and that what are standard release conditions to New Zealand prisoners who have had time in prison here who have had access to their lawyers who have had access to legal advice—those conditions do not apply to the people who will be arriving on planes. Their lawyers are over in Australia. The chances are they have not seen their lawyers for probably 8 9 or 10 months of their detention because part of the system in Australia is that they are being denied regular access to their lawyers.So they are getting here without any legal representation without any support people around them without any support base whatsoever without their family or friends being at the airport to greet them and yet they are expected to make head or tail of this determination notice. All things going well it would be served on them immediately upon landing here in New Zealand or if not within a practical time but certainly not greater than 6 months out. Maybe after 4 or 5 months of being here they might actually have been able to settle down and just get their heads around what has actually happened to their lives. Their lives have been flipped into turmoil basically from being put in detention going through the whole situation in the detention centres—in particular Christmas Island—to then being taken off the island and being taken back to a prison in mainland Australia then being brought here.They will be in shock they have been traumatised they will not know what is going on and yet they are going to be whacked with this official notice without any legal support without any assistance—or very little assistance—from the authorities. They do not even know where they are going to be living. They do not know beyond 5 days what is in store for them. They will not have an address to go to. They will not know. If the motel that they are plonked in is in Auckland somewhere in 5 days’ time they might be in Hamilton they might be in Rotorua they might be in Whangarei—they might be anywhere in New Zealand. And then the whole situation changes because then they have got to find a new probation officer they have got to find other people to report to depending on the location where they are going to end up.So I have real concerns about the human side of this. It is fine for the work to be done here but it is basically in a vacuum without regard for what those men and woman have gone through. That is why I believe that this should not have been done through urgency. We have had enough time through the course of the year to write this legislation and to do a good job of it. Instead we have heard that it has been drafted in 12 days.