Little Andrew: Public Safety (Public Protection Orders) Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeLittle Andrew: Public Safety (Public Protection Orders) Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 17 September 2013. Volume:693;Page:13442. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]ANDREW LITTLE (Labour): I rise to speak on the Public Safety (Public Protection Orders) Bill and from the outset I say that notwithstanding some concerns we have about an aspect of this bill we will support it because we think it should be given proper and appropriate examination in the Justice and Electoral Committee. I note that this bill has taken some time to arrive at this stage in Parliament. It was a promise made in the 2011 election campaign by the National Party. I think there was an undertaking for some consultation by the Government with other parties in Parliament. That did not happen. The bill was tabled and is now being read for the first time notwithstanding the fact that there have been prisoners reaching the end of their sentence who have posed a risk to the community.We understand that this bill and the measures that it contains apply when the sentence of an offender convicted of a violent or sexual offence is exhausted. There is a tension between the long-established principles of criminal justice which are that the crime is proven a conviction is entered a sentence is to reflect the magnitude of the crime and a punishment is proportionate to the crime that has been committed. Normally the sentence is given with the minimum incarceration period with potential for parole on the basis that a convicted offender has the opportunity to demonstrate that they are capable and that they can return to the community and pose little or no risk to the community. But the Minister of Justice is right. It is a very small number but it is the nature of humanity—there are people who because of the nature of their personality the nature of who they are continue to pose a serious risk to the community. There does need to be a way of managing just those sorts of people.We might wonder why it is that we have not had measures to deal with those people until now—why that has not been a problem until now. It is certainly something I have reflected on. Probably once upon a time these are the sorts of people who would have been locked up in a mental health institution and left and they would have been placed under some sort of compulsory order. They may not have had a genuine mental health problem—they might have had a personality disorder—but they would have been left inside a mental health institution and treated accordingly. Many years ago they possibly would have been treated through lobotomies and other measures which is what of course was depicted in that great movieOne Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. But we have a system now where of course we do not treat people with personality disorders who are routinely violent in that sort of way and we have a set of social mores that tries to put as many people as possible in the mainstream.But as the Minister has said and as we know from media reports there is that very small number of people who have demonstrated that regardless of convictions that they have had entered against them and the punishment that has been meted out to them and that they have been managed under in our criminal justice system they nevertheless continue to pose a risk to the community. We understand that there needs to be that balance struck between those people who fulfil their criminal justice obligations and who would otherwise be entitled to the freedom that they would otherwise get and those who were they to be freed into the community would pose not just some risk but as the legislation says an “imminent” risk—a risk that I would see as an almost certain risk to the public—and therefore there needs to be some sort of restraint.But as I said in a debate on a bill earlier today we are seeing more of this sort of legislation. We saw it with the Vulnerable Children Bill. We have seen it in other legislation where this House is being asked to put in place measures that do not fit the criminal justice framework that we are used to but are about affording protection to the community. I do note by comparison the provisions in this bill as compared with those in the Victims’ Orders Against Violent Offenders Bill. One of my criticisms about the latter bill is that it is left up to victims to take steps to afford themselves protection in circumstances where I would have thought it was obvious they were entitled to it. In this bill as indeed under the Vulnerable Children Bill it is left up to a public official to make that application in the civil jurisdiction of the court. I simply prevail upon the Minister to think carefully about the disparity that is opening up now in these pieces of legislation. If it is genuinely about affording protection to the public against people who are a clear and obvious risk to the public then that is a matter that certainly in the public interest the State should pick up the cost of and take responsibility for. There is no reason why some consistency should not be created across these pieces of legislation.Let me go back to the point I wanted to make. One of the things we will be doing as the select committee process unfolds with this bill is ensuring that a proper balance is struck between the criminal justice system doing its job within the sorts of principles and the framework that we are used to and those people who having been though the system are otherwise entitled to their freedom. This bill says that there will be some constraints on an offender who comes under the aegis of this piece of legislation. It says that a prisoner detained under a protection order under this bill will have the rights of a person of full capacity who is not subject to a public protection order except as limited by the Act.But the reality is that the limitations are extensive. The person must be in a facility within the precincts of a prison. Their communication means are subject to scrutiny and potential interference. They are not entitled to unsupervised access to the internet and there are other limitations that they are subject to as well: monitoring of telephone callssearch and seizure including strip-searches and drug and alcohol tests. So we will need to hear from the authorities if not the experts those who will be called upon to certify that these people are the risk that is claimed of them whether or not these sorts of measures simply go too far in terms of that balance between protecting the public and ensuring that there is at least some freedom afforded to people who have fulfilled their obligations to the criminal justice system.What we do not want to do is pass law after law and bill after bill that do not just encroach upon important freedoms but start establishing as a matter of principle that it is OK to do this without a proper consideration of those rights of citizenship including the rights of citizens who have transgressed the normal mores and socially accepted standards of behaviour but who have paid their dues done their time been punished as a result and ought ordinarily to expect to go back into the community. That is the principle of criminal justice. We must always uphold that but there will be exceptions. When we are faced with these difficult problems that this bill seeks to address then we in this House need to be absolutely sure in fulfilling our duty as representatives of all citizens that we have got that balance right that we have got the tension properly managed and that we do not create a principle that allows us without undue ceremony to encroach on those important rights. As I said at the beginning we will support this bill going to the select committee. We will examine it very closely and very carefully to make sure that all those rights and those principles are properly respected and observed.