Cunliffe David: Returning Offenders (Management and Information) Bill — In Committee Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeCunliffe David: Returning Offenders (Management and Information) Bill — In Committee Third Reading[Sitting date: 17 November 2015. Volume:710;Page:8127. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE (Labour—New Lynn): I appreciate the opportunity—in fact it is my first opportunity—to offer my support to this bill and to reiterate that of the Labour Party. I want to use this title and commencement opportunity which is by convention an opportunity to sum up some of the arguments that have been raised during the course of the bill in the Committee stage in particular to reiterate firstly—Tim Macindoe: No it’s an opportunity to talk about the title and commencement.Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE: —in relation to the title; thank you Mr Whip—firstly Labour’s support for the bill because our priority is and always has been to keep New Zealanders safe. It is important when we have prisoners returning to New Zealand that they are both monitored for safety and rehabilitated into society. I think it was Tony Blair who said—and it is not that I agree with everything he has ever said; certainly some things I do not but I like the line where he said that it is important to be tough on crime and tough on the causes of crime. We must ensure that this bill addresses both of those dimensionsin its implementation. That is why Labour lent its support to extended supervision orders and why we have consistently pushed for the Government to establish an information-sharing regime with Australia in relation to deported offenders. However we have had some concerns with this bill.I see the Minister in the chair the Hon Amy Adams—like my colleague Ruth Dyson we were both at the White Ribbon breakfast—and I need to acknowledge the Minister. I thought she spoke very well on that occasion. I am not sure that the Minister’s timing has been as good with this bill. We have known about this issue for months—close to a year. We are here 2 days before the first planeloads of ex-Christmas Island detainees are due to touch down and we are passing this through Parliamentunder urgency through all stages denying the public their normal opportunity to have input through the select committee process. The question has to be asked—and the Minister may care to address it because we ask the question respectfully—why we have got ourselves into this situation. It is certainly not because Labour or other Opposition parties have been stalling it because we are supporting the legislation overall. I think the public deserves an explanation as to the timing and process.Secondly in relation to the management and information aspects of the bill which are contained in the title the management requires as I have said both the tracking and public assurance function and also the rehabilitation function. As the Committee has discussed this bill through the Committee stage and we have worked through it clause by clause and as my colleague Kelvin Davis has repeatedly said there ain’t much here about rehabilitation. And it is very practical stuff. When someone who has not lived in New Zealand since they were 2 or 3 years old—and that was 30 years ago—gets off a plane and they have no family here they have no friends here they have no job here and they have no money because they have been in prison in say Australia or they have been in detention and they get off the plane and they have whatever it is the $100 that they get started with and a voucher for a motel for 5 days what then?The answer is there is sweet nothing for them beyond that. The likelihood is that the lowest common denominator will emerge and people may be taken up by gangs or other environments that are not going to be conducive to the public interest. It is so much cheaper and so much better to put the fence at the top of the cliff rather than the ambulance at the bottom—to keep people out of bad company by supporting their integration back into society. So in the title of this bill “Management and Information” we just wish there was a bit more management to go alongside the information.The third thing we want to raise is that the part of the regime for the most serious offenders has to be triggered by the Department of Corrections—again a management and information issue. The problem with that is that the department has been rumpy—that would be the best description. The Minister of Corrections has been on termination watch over his management of the Serco circus. We have had fight clubs we have had violence we have had drug use and we have had all sorts of carry on in the privatised prisons. It has been very much—The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Order! That is not part of this.Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE: —the same as the sort of things that have been shocking the public about Christmas Island.The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): No—that is not part of this.Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE: So the management of corrections has been wanting and we want to make sure that the management of returning offenders under this bill—