Nash Stuart: Returning Offenders (Management and Information) Bill — In Committee Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeNash Stuart: Returning Offenders (Management and Information) Bill — In Committee Third Reading[Sitting date: 17 November 2015. Volume:710;Page:8128. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]STUART NASH (Labour—Napier): I think a good name for this bill would actually be the “Closing the Gate After the Horse has Bolted Bill”. Let me read a quote. It says: “The Government is looking into a monitoring scheme for serious offenders deported to New Zealand.” Is that a quote that came from the Minister of Justice that we have heard in the debate in the last couple of days? No. That is a quote dated 25 January 2015. Minister your Government has been well aware of this all year—for longer than this—and yet you tell us that a bill has been drafted in the last 10 days. This is an issue that has been on the table. That quote is from the press. That quote is not from a select committee paper or from some sort of article that we got out of the Official Information Act. That was in the press. This is a bill that should not be here under urgency because it should have been passed by this House about 6 months ago when we realised there was a real problem here.If we have a look at this bill and the words that make up the title which is what we are debating the first one is “Returning”. If you look at the Oxford Dictionary which is used as the legal benchmark for the definition of language it says the meaning is to come or go back to a place. As Kelvin Davis has alluded to there are some people who are actually being deported back to New Zealand whence they had never come. There is no provision in this bill to send an offender back to the city that their family might have come from or where their support networks might be located if in fact they have any support networks. As we have heard they get $300 in their back pocket when they land in New Zealand. If their family is from Invercargill from Napier or from anywhere else in the country they have zero ability to even get back to a place where they may have an opportunity to start a new life where they just might have an opportunity to become a productive citizen. There is no provision for that whatsoever.Let us go to the next word “Offenders”. I think in the 21st century one of the basic tenets of our democracy is that you give people a second chance. If they have made a mistake that means they end up in jail they have done their time once they leave that jail. It does not matter what the mistake was or how bad it was or what previous life they led—if they have served their time then they deserve a second chance. They are not offenders once they are out of jail. That is a misnomer. I think it denies these people the ability for a second chance where their support networks are where their families are and where they have built a life.Let us have a look at the next word and that is “Management”. When you look at the dictionary definition of “management” as well it normally has a proactive connotation. It is about a way forward. This bill provides no way forward for any of these offenders or these Kiwis—or Australians—returning back to New Zealand. We have not heard how they are going to be managed—that will allow them to transition from the life they came from from the detention centres they were in from the jails where they spent time back to being productive members of society. That must be the ultimate gain for any community: to make sure that people have a second chance and that we put the processes in place and the management in place that allow them to once again have the opportunity to become productive citizens.And then we go to the next word—let us forget “and”—which is “Information”. What is this information going to be collected for? The Minister has provided no indication whatsoever of how this information is going to be used in a proactive way to once again allow these people to get on their feet and become productive members of society which is what we need to do. So this is not the Returning Offenders (Management and Information) Bill. It should be the “Government Mismanagement and Non-Information Bill”. What this is dealing with is one point in time: a specific point in time when a person from Australia who has done their time lands in New Zealand. That is that. It does not deal with the situation that then arises for our communities and for the person who has returned to New Zealand. It does not tell us how or what the community is going to provide for these people that will allow them to become productive citizens. It does not provide us with any opportunity for what that person themselves is going to be responsible for or how they are going to be given any sort of management plan to allow them to integrate.