Clendon David: Victims’ Orders Against Violent Offenders Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeClendon David: Victims’ Orders Against Violent Offenders Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 18 June 2014. Volume:699;Page:18684. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]DAVID CLENDON (Green):I want to take a short call and clearly the Chairperson has some enthusiasm for advancing the Victims’ Orders Against Violent Offenders Bill. This legislation undoubtedly fills a gap. The Greens are supporting it with some reservations which we have expressed at the Law and Order Committee and elsewhere but it does fill an obvious gap. A person who has suffered an assault or attack of some sort at the hands of someone with whom they had a relationship—a domestic relationship or some other form of intimate relationship—can make an appeal for a protection order. It seems perverse that there is no similar provision for someone who has been assaulted by someone who does not meet the criteria for a protection order. Undoubtedly this new mechanism does fill that gap.I would reiterate what Mr Goff has just said and indeed what Carol Beaumont referred to earlier and that is that community safety and the safety of individuals will never be achieved simply through legislative instruments statutory provisions or indeed through longer sentences more jails or more and better policing—not to say that the latter particularly does not have a significant role to play. Ultimately we will achieve peaceful and safe societies when people have access to education health care housing and useful and productive employment. The social situations and conditions that breed crime need to be dealt with rather than simply the punitive and reactive mechanisms that we can deal with through legislation like this.Having said that we certainly will support this legislation albeit recognising that it is not a panacea; it is far short of that. We continue to have some concerns and unlike some of our Labour colleagues we have some concerns about the threshold having been reduced from 5 years to 2 years. That seems a significant drop. The original advice from officials was that the 5-year threshold was set because the policy intention was that the orders should be available only in the most serious and violent sexual offending. In part—and I do not entirely accept the notion that it was driven by cost—the Attorney-General’s report on compliance pointed to some potential compromising of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act but conceded or acknowledged it was justified given that this order would be available only in response to the most extreme and serious offending as determined by that 5-year sentence. Regarding the fact that we are reducing this significantly to 2 years—although I understand the logic of aligning it with the Sentencing Act and with other legislation—information was given to us that a change in the threshold could undermine the Attorney-General’s conclusion that limitations imposed by the order could be justified under the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. That is not a trivial matter.My other reflection is that of course now that there are many many more people who will be eligible to apply for these orders the numbers will undoubtedly increase. The number of these orders could actually become quite significant not only because of the reducing of the threshold to 2 years but equally because of the other significant change which now enables people to apply for an order immediately post-sentencing at any time after sentencing. In the heat of the moment in the trial process yes the victim is often obliged to some extent to relive the very traumatic and unfortunate experience. At that point the victim is most likely to think “Yes we will apply for one of these orders.” whereas 2 or 3 years later on they might be perhaps more thoughtful in their approach. Time has passed and there is perhaps an acknowledgment that offenders can actually be rehabilitated in our prison system on a good day or on a best occasion. So I think the likelihood of large numbers of these orders being issued is something we can reasonably expect.Given that there will be more of these orders it does concern me that we might eventually come to a similar situation as the one we have come to with protection orders where the efficacy of protection orders is being questioned in part because there are a lot of them and in part because they are not necessarily respected or given weight either by the enforcement agencies or indeed by the people whom they are intended to protect. We have instances where a person protected by an order will willingly allow a breach of it and these consented breaches if you like lead to more serious breaches later on. The waters get seriously muddied the police are put into unfortunate situations and the integrity of the protection orders is compromised very often and makes them less of a protection than they might be.There is also the danger that people will become overly reliant and expect too much of these orders be it a protection order or the new victims’ orders and will assume that they will actually give them a very real protection. Unfortunately the orders cannot be entirely relied on. Ultimately no document statutory device or mechanism can provide protection. Sometimes it just requires common sense community and family support and all of those other things. Those two substantive changes made through the select committee process—the lowering of the threshold and the ability now for an order to be applied for and issued at any point after sentencing—we think could actually backfire and ultimately could put us in a less desirable situation in ways that were not necessarily meant to be. I can understand that there were problems with not having the orders available until after an offender had been released because there could then be a gap of time when the victim could feel threatened—or indeed could be threatened—before an order could be worked through the system but we think that immediately after sentencing is probably too early in the piece to allow for this very serious document this order to be applied.With those comments I do say again that we will support this bill but I would echo the comments made by other people that it is part of a piecemeal approach. We do look forward to having a clean slate—a new beginning in a sense—and an assessment of actually how you get justice and how you get community safety. That does require I think some more creative and zero-sum thinking than simply tacking on more and more provisions to existing provisions.I had a conversation today in fact with a person who had long experience as a lawyer in a provincial town. He had experience in everything from criminal law and family law through to tribunals—the whole gamut of legal action and advice. He among others is seeing practitioners who are understanding very well that our justice sector is in many ways under stress. We are not providing for a lot of the needs of people as they arrive and the priorities can be wrong. The system is stressed in many ways not least of all financially as has been mentioned. The capacity of our system to deal with people fairly and in a timely fashion is degrading—there is no question about that. With the cuts in legal aid many lawyers now simply cannot afford to function at legal aid rates if indeed people are deemed eligible for it. So we have some very serious problems in the provision of justice that need to be addressed and certainly piecemeal approaches like this bill simply will not do it. Thank you.Clause 1 agreed to.Clause 2 agreed to.Bill to be reported with amendment presently.House resumed.The Chairperson reported the Companies and Limited Partnerships Amendment Bill with amendment and that the Committee had divided it into two bills and the Victims’ Orders Against Violent Offenders Bill with amendment.Report adopted.