Clendon David: Victims’ Orders Against Violent Offenders Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeClendon David: Victims’ Orders Against Violent Offenders Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 27 August 2013. Volume:693;Page:13077. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]DAVID CLENDON (Green): Kia ora Mr Assistant Speaker. I have listened with interest to the contributions from the Labour Party speakers in particular. I think it is fair to say that in the Greens we have come to a similar position. We will support this Victims’ Orders Against Violent Offenders Bill as far as the Law and Order Committee but our support is highly conditional. We have major concerns about this bill. If its purpose is the proposition that we need to offer a level of protection and a level of comfort to people who have been the victims of violent crime then undoubtedly that is entirely a wholly tenable proposition and one that we can support. But in terms of the mechanism the content and the detail of this bill we see so many fish-hooks in it that we do have serious concerns about whether those can be ironed out sufficiently. We will be supporting the bill going to the select committee. We look forward to the select committee process. Clearly we will engage with it and we will re-evaluate our position and our support or otherwise at the conclusion of that process.As I said the proposition that it is desirable to offer comfort to victims of crime and criminal offending is at the forefront of this legislation. It reminds me again though that we seem to see a number of bills that seek to incrementally add some level ofservice to victims of crime. This country desperately needs a clean sheet of paper an overall review a sort of zero sum game about victims’ rights. How do we address victims’ rights across the board? That is something that successive Governments seem reluctant to engage with. Again it has been a Green position for a long time that we need to get cross-party agreement that in all sorts of ways we are not serving victims well in this country. We need to sit down and work out how we can do that strategically and in an integrated way and not relying on these amendments and additions and the meddling round the margins of legislation.What will eventuate if this legislation is enacted is that a non-contact order will be created. As we learnt from the explanatory note the non-contact order would prohibit an offender from having any form of contact with a victim. It may also prohibit the offender from entering any specified area or from living or working in any specified area. That is an extremely potent set of conditions to impose on a person—to determine where they may or may not live where they may or may not work and what areas they may or may not enter.The consequences for a released person could be quite profound and actually counter-productive to their continued rehabilitation and reintegration back into society. A person might for example be denied the right to return to a small town despite the fact that that may be the place they are most likely to have family or other support networks. It might be the place where they might find more secure tenure and accommodation and the place where they might find a job and actually work to put their offending behind them and become a contributing person in society. They may be denied that opportunity and the best opportunity they have to put their offending behind them and to get on with life.It just raises with me an interesting conundrum too: what would happen in the event that an offender is released from prison and goes to live in and is working in a particular place and then a victim of that person’s offending chooses to move into the area where they are established? It is kind of a reverse sensitivity thing. I am not sure that this bill has anything in it to accommodate that particular instance. I think it is one of the little details that we would need to reflect on and think about.Successful reintegration of a former offender demands that that person commit to changing their behaviour and that they honestly and truly put their offending behind them. But as AnneOpie pointed out in her excellent study which she titledFrom Outlaw to Citizen: Making the Transition from Prison in New Zealand there has to also be a social space. The community must also give a person an opportunity to redeem themselves to demonstrate that they are actually willing and able to reform and to become contributing members of society. Some of the provisions of this bill could actually be counter-productive in that sense and count against the possibility of that person having the opportunity to prove that they may once again be trusted members of society.I am concerned at the definition of “offender” in this bill. It seems that a person who offends once will for ever carry that label. It is the Shylock dilemma—you call me dog therefore beware my bite. It almost sets up a situation for a self-fulfilling prophecy. Labelling somebody for ever as an offender could have a counter-productive outcome on their behaviours forthwith.I was interested to hear some of the Government spokespersons talking about the need to prevent victims from being further intimidated and being persecuted and victimised again. In fact the status quo protects people against those very things. If I seek to intimidate or persecute someone the law will be on to me very quickly and quite rightly so. In the status quo we have release conditions parole conditions restraining orders protection orders and bonds to keep the peace. These are all timelimited. One of the concerns we have is that the proposed non-contact orders could be open-ended and we see some difficulties with that.We are told that a problem with some of the existing protection orders is that many victims are unaware of the existing orders that they may mistrust the court system and that they are people without internet access or with poor English skills. These existing provisions simply are not accessible to them. I ask the question: what is going to change if we simply create another form of protection order a non-contact order? Is that going to be any more accessible to people who already are demonstrably not able to access the restraining orders the protection orders and all these other mechanisms that are in place? I would also echo MsDalziel’s comments about the consultation. Yes of course the consultation should include community law and should include Women’s Refuge or indeed the Ministry of Women’s Affairs but it is an extraordinarily limited range of opinion. It was a very limited range of views that seems to have informed the drafting of this legislation.So I simply ask what is going to change if we do not deal with some of those limitations some of those barriers to people finding the existing legal protections. What is the earthly point of creating yet another layer of theoretical protection which actually may be no more accessible to those people than what is in place already? Again in the regulatory impact statement we hear repeatedly this notion of a legislative gap suggesting that there is a gap in the legislation. I would actually question that.With reference to the bill itself what would be the effects of a restraining order? The effects of a restraining order would include that an offender against whom an order is made would be prohibited from “doing or threatening to do any of the following: (i) watching loitering near or preventing or hindering access to or from the protected victim’s place of residence business employment educational institution or any other place …”. So for loitering hindering somebody going about their daily business or preventing them from accessing their home their place of education or their place of work we have existing legal remedies for that. If I seek to simply hinder somebody from entering their place of work of course I could be taken to task legally. Equally an offender would be prohibited from “following stopping or accosting the victim;” and from “giving offensive material to the victim or leaving offensive material where it will be found by … [that person]”.All of this is covered by existing law. I think this notion of a legislative gap is something we need to interrogate a bit more. Maybe we need to facilitate access to some of the existing protections for victims of crime because as I started out by saying it is absolutely true that a person who has been violently assaulted raped or subjected to some form of violent abuse will understandably be extremely nervous arguably about the offender coming back into close contact in their community.But there is a flip side to this and we need to look at that wider picture. It has been pointed out that in all likelihood this legislation would be found to be in breach of section 18 and section 26 of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act in respect of freedom of movement and in respect of double jeopardy. Are we going to for ever punish a person who may have done their time and rehabilitated themselves? Violent offending sometimes is serial but often they are one-off events—somebody gets to a point in their life they respond violently commit an unacceptable act pay the punishment and pay for the crime. Ought we continue to punish them with a lifelong punishment potentially for something they have done and which they may wish to put behind them?So to where I began—as I say we do support the purpose of this bill. We need to do more to secure victims’ rights and for that reason we will be supporting this legislation but we will be asking some very difficult questions. We will be seeking to get a much more robust a much better-balanced and a much fairer piece of legislation in order tolook for a mechanism that will serve victims without necessarily imposing damage on others. Thank you.