Shearer David: Returning Offenders (Management and Information) Bill — First Reading Second Reading In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeShearer David: Returning Offenders (Management and Information) Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee[Sitting date: 17 November 2015. Volume:710;Page:8049. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]DAVID SHEARER (Labour—Mt Albert): On Thursday “Con Air”arrives: a flight that is chartered by the Australians that is arriving here with 20 people who have just been released. They will arrive here and we hope that the legislation that is going through urgency here will be in place for the arrival of that plane. That is a disgrace when this Government knew last year on 14 December that Australia had changed its laws.And that Minister of Justice over there received on 12 February a memo from her ministry that said “The number of offenders being deported to New Zealand from Australia is likely to increase significantly as a result of recent changes to Australian law.” that “Some deported offenders who have been convicted of very serious offences may pose a significant risk to the New Zealand community.” and that “Offenders born in New Zealand who have lived most of their lives overseas are likely to face additional challenges reintegrating into the community and avoiding reoffending.” That is a disgrace; that was in February this year and here we are with 2 weeks of Parliament to go and we are ramming through a piece of legislation that should have been written months ago.In the meantime there have been dozens of people who have already come back. Some of those have come back on charter flights chartered by the Australian Government which is too worried to put those people on commercial flights and instead is putting them on charter flights. As the Minister of Justice herself has acknowledged although some of those people are there for relatively minor offences they include people who have been convicted of murder of manslaughter of rape and of paedophilia. We have no checks and no ability to stop those people when they arrive and they will disappear into New Zealand. The police themselves say that 43 percent of those people who have arrived need to be on some sort of supervision list—43 percent.And last week we had the audacity of the Prime Minister who stood up here in an extraordinary outrage and said that the National Government was protecting New Zealanders. Can you imagine what he should be saying now? He should be apologising to New Zealanders that the Government has nothing in place for those people who have arrived back—nothing in place. He should be apologising now for not making the preparations for not standing up to the Australians and for not saying to Mr Turnbull—instead of having some sort of love fest—that nobody coming into New Zealand can come back unless the Australian authorities give the details of what they were convicted for.Right now we know that the Australian authorities are not giving us those details that we are seeking from them so we actually do not know who is coming through to New Zealand. We do not know what crimes they have committed and what risk they might be to New Zealand. Instead of Mr Key saying that we have a wonderful relationship with Australia—yes we might have a great relationship with Australia but at the end of the day that relationship should serve to further our interests and this is certainly not in our interests when they will not in any way cooperate with us in giving us the information about returning criminals to New Zealand.If we had just some sense of cojones in that Government we should at least say to the Australians—The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): Order! That is a term that has been ruled out previously. The member will withdraw it.DAVID SHEARER: I withdraw that. If this Government had any sort of moral standing it would have said to the Australians: “You don’t tell us who’s coming we don’t let you land.” It is as simple as that.I believe that we are in a serious situation where the Government has been telling us all along that it is standing up for our protections and our freedoms. It is certainly not. It is not standing up for us when it comes to New Zealanders coming back here with criminal convictions and no legislation and no procedures in place to receive them and it is not standing up for those New Zealanders who have been wrongly detained in Australia by Australian authorities after having done their time. That too is a right that should not be taken away from anybody. That Government is absolutely shameless and it should be ashamed of itself and of the way that it has actually treated New Zealanders.