Dalziel Lianne: Prisoners’ and Victims’ Claims (Continuation and Reform) Amendment Bill — Second Reading In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeDalziel Lianne: Prisoners’ and Victims’ Claims (Continuation and Reform) Amendment Bill — Second Reading In Committee[Sitting date: 08 May 2013. Volume:689;Page:9742. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon LIANNE DALZIEL (Labour—Christchurch East): I rise to speak in relation to the Prisoners’ and Victim’s Claims (Continuation and Reform) Amendment Bill. I am afraid I cannot repeat the enthusiasm of the previous National Party speaker Kate Wilkinson on this particular piece of legislation. The reason that I do not feel enthusiastic about our position which is to support the passage of the bill is that in so doing in actual fact we are allowing a piece of legislation to go through when the real issue has not been addressed and the real issue is the rights of victims. During a select committee hearing there was a very powerful presentation from the Sensible Sentencing Trust. It was very interesting. I have on occasions clashed with members of the Sensible Sentencing Trust on some issues where I am regarded as being somewhat soft on crime perhaps but I think that its submission was compelling. Why it was compelling was that it actually raised a whole lot of questions around where the Ministry of Justice was up to as far as victims’ rights went.Part of the sunset provisions that went with the original legislation which has had to be reinstated once—and in fact there was a reinstatement bill for a further sunsetted provision when it was replaced with this bill that we are now dealing with. There were two reasons for that. One was to make sure that there was put in place a good process for ensuring that prisoners’ rights were upheld. We are signatories to the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment after all and the Ombudsman did come to the select committee and tell us that there are issues around cruel and inhumane treatment of prisoners. The submitters talked about unlawful detention they talked about unlawful strip-searching and they talked about inappropriate placement on segregation resulting in isolation and the removal of minimum entitlements. Nobody wants to see prisoners treated in that way when they are in prison. No matter what they have gone to prison for their punishment is their imprisonment; it is not the way that they are treated while they are in prison and they are entitled to be treated with dignity and respect.However the victims of crime are also entitled to be treated with dignity and respect and here are the “Guiding principles for providing effective service and support to victims of crime” that they brought to our attention: “Respectful and confidential treatment: … Individualised response / flexible services: … Services are accessible: … Provision of ‘right information at the right time in the right format’: … Delivered by experienced knowledgable well-trained empathetic staff: … Consistent high quality services and support: … Integrated service provision: … End-to-end individualised support: … Accountable services:”. Where do you think they got that from? Do you think that that was a charter that they wrote themselves? Because it certainly looks like a victims’ charter to me. Where they got that from was the Ministry of Justice website. It was a report commissioned by the Ministry of JusticeVictims of crime in the adult criminal justice system: A stocktake of the literature. In fact after an extensive range of research relevant to crime victimisation the expert who provided this report to theministry identified a number of guiding principles that emerged as important in delivering effective support and services to victims.This bill does nothing to advance any of those. That is why it is with some disappointment that we see it being enacted but we are supporting it because the balance has to be there and on this occasion the balance requires us to vote for the bill.