Ryall Tony: Parole (Extended Supervision) and Sentencing Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Ryall Tony: Parole (Extended Supervision) and Sentencing Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:618;Page:14163] 
Hon TONY RYALL (National—Bay of Plenty) 
: 
 I wonder whether I could draw the Minister’s attention to new section 107H in clause 10 of the reported-back bill “Conditions of extended supervision order”. I think this provision gets to the heart of my concerns about this bill. Everybody wants us to have some sort of regime in place for the small group of highly dangerous sex offenders who have come to the end of their sentence. The officials have assured me that they use section 107 of the Parole Act on these people to try to ensure that they serve their whole sentence. So everyone wants a regime for when these people come to the end of their sentence. 
I would like the Minister in the chair the Hon Rick Barker to take another call and talk a little about the actual nature of the monitoring. Minister Goff said that these people will be subject to 24-hour-a-day 7-day-a-week monitoring. This bill provides that the parole authorities in exercising an extended supervision order can impose special conditions and those special conditions can include the person living as if he or she were on home detention for a year. Then we get into the ongoing monitoring by the probation service. New section 107I(1A) states that an offender is subject to a special condition that “… may include a requirement that the offender submit to being accompanied and monitored for up to 24 hours a day by an individual who has been approved by a person authorised by the chief executive to undertake person-to-person monitoring;”. The concern here is that if the Minister is saying he will give 24-hour-a-day 7-day-a-week monitoring why then is this a discretionary provision of an extended supervision order? The provision states that if an offender is subject to a special condition referred to in subsection (1)(b) the condition may include the requirement for 24/7 in-person supervision. 
The Minister in the chair has talked about how there would be 24-hour-a-day 7-day-a-week in-person supervision. The use of the word “may” suggests that not everyone will be subject to that level of supervision. I wonder whether the Minister would take a call to explain why that condition is discretionary to the board rather than a requirement that a person is subject to that 24-hour-a-day 7-day-a-week monitoring he talked about. He said in the Chamber that eligible offenders would be subject to that monitoring. We all thought that that would be in person—the sort of monitoring that Barry Allan Ryder had for the first part of his sentence before it got too expensive and the authorities cut it back—but it became clear that the Minister was talking only about home detention. If the Government is prepared to put in this provision why is it discretionary and why is it not mandatory that anyone on an extended supervision order have that 24/7 supervision in person which would provide a level of security and safety to the community that traditional home detention would not? 
The problem is that after the 12-month period of home detention conditions for these people we are back to the hopeless level of parole supervision by the probation service. We heard about quarterly contacts and I do not think that is as good as it could be. This bill is better than nothing but surely the Government could do better on this. I wonder whether the Minister could explain why the provision for the 24-hour-a-day 7-day-a-week in-person supervision is discretionary when the Government is saying that there is this very small cohort that needs to be dealt with firmly by this legislation.