Goff Phil: Prisoners’ and Victims’ Claims (Continuation and Reform) Amendment Bill — Second Reading In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeGoff Phil: Prisoners’ and Victims’ Claims (Continuation and Reform) Amendment Bill — Second Reading In Committee[Sitting date: 08 May 2013. Volume:689;Page:9734. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon PHIL GOFF (Labour—Mt Roskill): I rise to take a call on the Prisoners’ and Victims’ Claims (Continuation and Reform) Amendment Bill. There was an unfortunatecomplacency I think in Mr Simpson’s speech when he said that the scheme was working well and is looking after victims. I beg to differ. I beg to differ from the perspective of one who introduced this legislation in the first place and had it legislated through Parliament.The reason I put a sunset clause in the legislation back in 2005 was that I wanted to review the scheme to see that it was doing much more than just being a stopgap measure against windfall profits arising out of theTaunoa case. I wanted to be sure that victims were properly compensated by those who offended against them horrendously when the criminal offender was in a position to provide that compensation. As it works out the legislation probably had a prohibitive effect in terms of some gold-mining lawyers on behalf of some really hard-core criminals but it has not raised a lot of money for victims. I think it was about $45000 from memory.There seemed to me to be a lot of people—not just the vicious blue-collar criminals who were never compensating their victims but another whole category of criminals. These Mr Simpson are the people the National Party knows better—the rich and the powerful the reckless and the greedy. [Interruption] They are the white-collar criminals—Tau Henare knows exactly whom I am talking about—who rip off people’s life-savings. The member will have as I have in my electorate people who have lost their entire life-savings because of the greed and the recklessness and the criminality of people who might have gone to King’s College who have big houses on Paritai Drive and who have all the privileges in life but are criminals nevertheless.I say that when those rich and powerful and privileged criminals rip off people of their life-savings you cannot just put them in jail for 2 years allow them to protect their savings in family trusts and then let them come out of jail and get on with their high lifestyles while their victims go to their graves penniless because they ripped them off.I say that absolutely nothing in this legislation addresses that class of criminal—absolutely nothing. And yet we have seen in the last 5 years time and again people like Petricevic or whatever his name is—he ripped off people in the 1980s and ripped them off again in the 21st century—who get out of jail after a while and are living the high lifestyle. They stole not bits and pieces out of houses like burglars do; they stole hundreds of millions of dollars. They did not steal because they were underprivileged; they stole because they were greedy—Hon Anne Tolley: What did your Government do while it was happening? Sat there and twiddled their thumbs.Hon PHIL GOFF: —and yet they get away with a situation where they never pay their dues Minister. They never pay their dues to society. The reason that I put a sunset clause in the legislation was not simply to stop windfall gains for people who are rotten criminals who never gave any compensation to their victims. That is why I did it in the first instance but I put the review clause in to ensure—Hon Anne Tolley: That Labour Government did nothing—watched it happen.Hon PHIL GOFF: Look I hope the Minister will take a call to explain herself and justify herself because the sunset clause was there so there would be a review so that you Minister—The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): Order! I am sorry to interrupt the honourable member. There are interjections taking place between members who do not have the call and that is out of order. I know Mr Goff is making a strong robust speech but that does not mean that members from this side and that side can interject on each other. If you want to interject on Mr Goff that is fine but not on each other.Hon PHIL GOFF: It is really sad that over these debates time and again members on the Government side fail to take a call and do not show the “intestitudinal”fortitude—I think that is a word for guts—to get up and debate the bill but they will sit in their seats and interject continually. What I am saying to the Minister who was interjecting is that the sunset clause was for a review so that we could see how we could get this legislation working better for victims.The legislation has expired a number of times. Did the Government ever use the opportunity to be imaginative to show its commitment and its determination to support the rights of victims by getting a piece of legislation that dealt not with a tiny minority of cases in prison—cases where the corrections department got it wrong and was forced to pay compensation—but with the wider spectrum of criminal offenders who never set things right for their victims? I am a strong believer in restorative justice. What restorative justice means is that the offender sets things right for the victims. My colleague next to me Mr Sio knows the system of ifoga in Samoa which is based on a person showing remorse and trying to put things right for the victim.Peseta Sam Lotu-Iiga: Say sorry for breaking the law.Hon PHIL GOFF: Mr Lotu-Iiga will know that system. He should know about it. In terms of restorative justice it is really important that the offender shows remorse—genuine remorse—but that is not very concrete. What is concrete is whether the offender is able to make a reparation payment. It is too often the case with our offenders that they come from dysfunctional backgrounds they have no savings and they have no income. When they are locked up in prison they have no ability to pay and in most cases victims get nothing back from their offenders. That is a fact of life. You cannot get blood out of a stone.What you can do if there is a windfall profit by an offender such as through the compensation cases that followedTaunoa and if they have got money is you can get it and you can give to the victim. Or if somebody wins Lotto in prison—you know they are sitting on a million dollars and they have done grievous damage to their victims—then they should be required to make a payment when they are able to. That is common sense. That is justice in the real meaning of the word.The reason why I focused before on the white-collar offender was that after the global financial crisis which revealed the recklessness and the greed of those white-collar offenders a number of them have ended up in prison and they are the very people who could be required to make compensation maybe not at the time they are in prison but thereafter.There are people who were in prison in the 1980s and who are now very wealthy businessmen again. Have they ever done anything to set things right for their victims? The answer is no. They are back sipping their cocktails living in their mansions driving their flash cars when they have driven other people into poverty at the end of their lives. I resent that. I deeply resent that. I resent it because I have represented constituents who have been placed in that situation—worked hard all their lives to get their savings and maybe somewhat naively put their money in particular institutions that were not sufficiently blue-chip. But they did it in good faith. They believed the promises that were made. They had their savings ripped off and the people who did it to them never paid their dues. Although we will support this legislation reluctantly because those who get windfall profits in one way—Scott Simpson: After all that?Hon PHIL GOFF: No Mr Simpson you should have listened. That is one of your problems as a new member. You have not learnt to listen yet. The Government could have done more than simply raise $45000 for victims. It could have raised tens of millions of dollars to be paid back to victims if it had been imaginative in the sort of legislation it put through. It could have got those white-collar criminals who ripped offtheir fellow citizens to pay their dues. It could have got them to indulge in restorative justice and set things right for those who have suffered.So my objection to this legislation is that it does not go anywhere near far enough. It is faint-hearted. It lacks imagination. Members on that side of the House do not live up to the rhetoric they use on the campaign trail when they say that they stand up for victims. This legislation does nothing for most victims.Hon Trevor Mallard: It’s weak.Hon PHIL GOFF: It is weak. It does not do what the Government could have done if there had been a proper review if it had worked through the options and if it had got its officials working hard in the 4 years that it has had in Government to actually put something in place that would see a far wider extension of looking after the victims ensuring restorative justice and ensuring that people who rip off others are required to put things right when they are in the position to do so. On all of those measures this legislation fails and that is why every member of the Government has got their head down at the moment because they know the truth of what I am saying. This is weak legislation. It could have been much better.