Clendon David: Prisoners’ and Victims’ Claims (2012 Expiry and Application Dates) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Clendon David: Prisoners’ and Victims’ Claims (2012 Expiry and Application Dates) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Sitting date: 26 June 2012. Volume:681;Page:3316. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
DAVID CLENDON (Green) 
: 
 I am pleased to take a brief call on this quite brief bill the Prisoners’ and Victims’ Claims (2012 Expiry and Application Dates) Amendment Bill. In particular I would just like to address Part 1. It tells us in Part 1 that the purpose of this part is to amend Subpart 1 of Part 2 of the principal Act—in effect to extend it by 1 year until the end of June in 2013. That is fairly innocuous on the face of it but effectively it extends for another year a piece of legislation that has not been proven to be particularly effective and that does create some serious concerns about the nature of the delivery of justice—restorative justice indeed. I will refer to that point briefly. 
I think the purpose of this bill could more rightly be stated as actually compensating for the inaction of this Government in this term and indeed in the previous term. For whatever reasons it is interesting to trace the genesis of this bill and how we got to this position we are in. The substantive legislation of course was passed in 2005 with an expiry date of June 2010. Clearly this was known so there was a 5-year opportunity indeed to think through what was going to either replace this bill or indeed allow it to hit that sunset clause and go out of existence. The National Party’s statement of its policy on victims and crime in 2008 made it clear that it intended to maintain something along the lines of this legislation. Therefore it was not that the Government had to develop policy yet it was not until 22 April 2010 that the Government brought into the House a bill to extend the provision to give the first extension to that 2005 legislation. It was tabled on 22 April 2010. A few days later it had the first reading; 1 bare calendar month was allowed for the select committee to consider it. A few days later under urgency it was sent through its second reading its Committee stage and its final reading to extend it to the date coming before us now—to 30 June 2012. 
Once again we find ourselves—not in urgency but certainly looking to pass this legislation a matter of days before it is due to expire when the sunset clause kicks in—doing this under extended hours. Tomorrow morning we can expect that this will go through its final stages. One must wonder at the process. The expiry of this legislation was I believe always intended to be accompanied by or to be in parallel with a substantial conversation a discussion about how best to deal with victims how best to ensure that victims do get some rightful restitution. I am quite sure nobody has any argument with that and we in the Greens certainly do not. The principle of restorative justice is at the core of our justice policy. 
We know that with this bill the Government has weighted numbers. It has been supported by the Labour Party for reasons that I can understand up to a point. It is encouraging open to and hoping and expecting that we will get a 12-month debate—an intelligent informed debate about how best to ensure that victims get rightful restitution. I have much less confidence than the Labour Party obviously does that we will get that open debate simply because we have a bill on the table—the redirection bill—that will make most of the provisions of this current legislation permanent. I simply do not have any confidence that in the context of that bill coming up before us quite soon there will be this open debate about the very nature of the justice system. 
Clearly we all want restitution for victims. A key principle of restorative justice is certainly about restitution but it is also for the victim to see that the offender has internalised the fact that they offended and that the victim was hurt. The genuine remorse from an offender is an important part of the restorative justice process and nowhere in the extension of this legislation—or indeed in the redirection bill that we will be debating presumably some time in the next few months—is there really reference to that fundamental part of restorative justice that looks at the whole breadth of the offender once more being made to feel that they are secure that their rights have been—