Dean Jacqui: Victims’ Orders Against Violent Offenders Bill — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeDean Jacqui: Victims’ Orders Against Violent Offenders Bill — Second Reading[Sitting date: 06 March 2014. Volume:696;Page:16455. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]JACQUI DEAN (National—Waitaki): I can tell Phil Goff the member who has just resumed his seat that the Hon Judith Collins was more than delighted to spend an hour with the member on the aeroplane and it is lovely that he has chosen to take credit for every change that the Law and Order Committee has made.It is interesting that he said that the Victims’ Orders Against Violent Offenders Bill was not good enough. He said: “The bill as introduced is not good enough and it took me to make all the changes.” It is interesting. Well that member needs to answer this. That member needs to tell the House how come it was good enough when he was the Minister of Justice? So please feel free to take a call to explain how come it was good enough when he was the Minister of Justice which he has made an awful lot of during his time on the select committee when discussing these bills. How come it is not good enough when the National Government comes in and gets to and fixes things but it was good enough when he was the Minister? So just answer that one Phil Goff.Anyway coming back to the bill we did have a very good select committee process—Hon Phil Goff: We could have done this 100 years ago.JACQUI DEAN: A hundred years ago—the member has just said that it was 100 years ago when he was the Minister of Justice. We know that that member has been in this House for over 30 years and shows no signs of leaving because he loves it so much but—oh I do not know—under the new regime there might be some changes over on that side of the House so maybe that member should keep his head down below the parapet.We did have a very good select committee process in fact and it is true that the bill as introduced related only to offenders who had been convicted and sentenced to imprisonment for 5 years or over. I do have to give credit to Phil Goff—just a tiny bit; not much—Hon Phil Goff: Oh come on. Do the decent thing for once.JACQUI DEAN: —but I will do the decent thing and say that OK all right Phil Goff did bring this matter to the attention of the committee. We do work collegially believe it or not—believe it or not—and we did have a good discussion around the difference between 5 years’ imprisonment and 2 years’ imprisonment.The reason that we did recommend to officials 3 years’ imprisonment and then 2 years’ imprisonment which was even better is that if you have a look at it from the victim’s point of view—and we had a victim in front of our committee yesterday who had been in receipt of domestic violence. We saw the photos of the gashes in her skull and her broken nose and we heard about the trauma that she is still living through now. Even though the assaults were some time ago—a year ago or more—she is still living through that experience very badly and that is what drove this committee.So I can tell you that it was not necessarily a desire to clobber offenders by bringing more into the net from 5 years’ imprisonment—OK we brought only a few into that—down to 2 years’ imprisonment. A whole lot more prisoners are captured but what that means is that a whole lot more victims are able to take advantage of these victims’ orders and that is what drove the work of this committee. In fact it is the many many victims who we were privileged to have made submissions to our committee. So that is one very good change that the select committee made.We made another change within the select committee to these victims’ orders which are unlimited depending on what the shape of the final order looked like so that the offender was not to reside nearby the victim and was to have no contact with them andnot intimidate them in any way. Well we had a look at the scenario of say a gang member who had subjected a woman and family to say domestic violence and who was put into prison and then it was easy enough for him to direct his gang associates. We do see in the news regrettably these young gang prospects who will do anything to get their patch so there is a danger always of these convicted men in prison directing their associates—the more gullible members of our society—to further harass the victim. What we have done is extended the non-contact order to apply to associates of the offender. Under certain circumstances we were always very careful to balance the rights of individuals in this. Of course the victim is first in our thoughts but we must take heed of the human rights of the offenders as well. That was another good change that the select committee made.Under the bill as introduced the victim was able to apply to a District Court for a non-contact order at any time after the offender had been released from prison. Once again we had a look at the implications of that. So what does that mean? Regrettably it is nearly always a woman who has been the victim of some violent offence—sometimes domestic; normally domestic—who goes through the trauma of the offence the trauma of the trial sees the offender go into prison then has the trauma of that offender being released. If it was a domestic incident they had the ability to have a protection order. If it was a violent offence a restraining order was an option available.But there was a bit of a hole there in the legislation which meant that the offender would be released from prison and then there would be a gap or nothing to protect the victim. It caused an awful lot of fear amongst women children and victims that the offender was able to get out of prison and then who knew what they could do? They might have parole conditions yes. They would have if it had been a sentence of longer than 2 years. But even so those conditions would expire after 6 months. Therefore the committee decided to change the clause relating to applications for a non-contact order so that they could take place any time after sentencing. That I hope will give a lot of comfort to victims and that is what this bill is all about. Thank you.