Bindra MaheshMAHESH BINDRA (NZ First): It is a pleasure to rise on behalf of New Zealand First to speak to the Enhancing Identity Verification and Border Processes Legislation Bill. As we are all aware—and various speakers have spoken about it—the case was where Phillip John Smith who was serving a long sentence and was on a 74-hour temporary release from the Spring Hill Corrections Facility managed to get a passport issued in his birth name. He went to Auckland Airport unhindered and unstopped and managed to flee right out to Brazil. A Department of Internal Affairs inquiry was held which identified a number of shortcomings and it came up with an equally large number of recommendations. So operationally Phillip John Smith should have been on the victim notification register but clearly he was not. What happens when an offender applies for a temporary release is that he or she is assessed by the prisoner manager assisted by other officers. In this case the victim notification register clearly was not applied to Phillip John Smith and that is the reason that his temporary release was wrongfully approved. After getting his temporary release approved Phillip John Smith went right out to Brazil and by successfully escaping from our borders he actually stopped being our problem and became somebody else's problem. But we are a responsible nation and it was not acceptable to us that he had become somebody else's problem. We have a reputation to protect in the international arena. To his bad luck—and to our good fortune—Phillip John Smith was apprehended in Brazil and brought back to New Zealand. By the time he was brought back to New Zealand our reputation as a law-abiding country and as law-abiding people had taken a serious beating in the international arena. Our law enforcement agencies and border control systems had also become the laughing stock of the world. The multi-agency review came up with a number of recommendations and observations. Some of them are really really damning for the Department of Corrections and the police. I would like to read out a few of those—Corrections' staff failed to adequately assess the extra risk Smith posed on temporary release". As I mentioned earlier he was meant to be on the victim notification register but clearly was not and that victim notification register was later on as a knee-jerk reaction amended to read that he was actually on the victim notification register. So the assessment system itself had failed. The second thing is that his sponsor for the temporary release was unaware that Smith was supposed to be with them so there was a huge lack of communication between the Department of Corrections and the sponsors themselves. Had the victims of Phillip John Smith been notified prior to his temporary release as the system demands I am sure they would have objected to his being released in the community even if it was for 74 hours. The third thing which the police are being blamed for in this whole saga is that the police checked the wrong address. The police are actually responsible for checking the address of the sponsor who sponsors an offender in jail and is responsible for their stay and their well-being during the time of temporary release. This clearly did not happen because the police checked the wrong address twice. When the Department of Corrections realised that Smith was not with his sponsor it was slow to tell police that he had escaped. This was again unacceptable. After learning that Phillip John Smith had indeed escaped the country the police were too slow to alert Interpol which again is a huge shortcoming. This bill is actually a knee-jerk reaction to a knee-jerk reaction. The inquiry or the review was a knee-jerk reaction to the escape itself and this bill is the fallout from that review. The review gave 39 recommendations out of which the Government has accepted in principle 34 recommendations. How much work will go into that into fixing those shortcomings is yet to be seen. However the intent of this bill is to enable agencies such as the police the Customs Service and the Department of Corrections to have instant access to jointly held information on serious offenders and mental health patients who have figured in the criminal justice system. As to the information so held it is expected that it will be more technical and more accurate and hopefully it will not infringe upon the basic human rights of any individual. By successfully escaping Phillip John Smith taught us a few lessons. I hope that we will learn lessons from that escape. Because the intent of this bill is to strengthen interdepartmental information and the sharing of information including technical data New Zealand First will support this bill. Thank you."