Legislation has been passed under urgency to ensure all people returning to the country after being in prison systems abroad continue to come under parole-like oversight and support back in New Zealand
A motion was passed by Parliament this week to accord urgency to a couple of Government bills - one of them was the Returning Offenders (Management and Information) Amendment Bill
This bill tweaks legislation from 2015 in order to ensure that all people returning to the country after being in prison systems abroad - particularly those deported from Australia - can continue to come under parole-like oversight and support when back in New Zealand as the original Act intended.
As Justice Minister Kiri Allan explained, the tweak was necessary because a recent High Court decision found that the Returning Offenders (Management and Information) Act 2015 didn't not apply retrospectively.
"The court also found that natural justice requires the Commissioner of Police to provide notice and a right to be heard before determining a returning offender's status under the Act. The effect of the decision means that the Act is not available for returning offenders, such as 501 deportees from Australia, who offended before the Act came into force in 2015. The decision would also delay the making of returned offenders orders, which are currently served on the person as they enter the country," Allan explained while introducing the Bill which then went through all stages yesterday and this morning during urgency.
"There are currently about 265 returning offenders being managed by the Department of Corrections on particular conditions, and of this cohort about 40 are being managed for convictions that pre-date the Act, with several considered to be high risk. The court's findings mean that these offenders could apply to have their order quashed, and, further, this affects future returning prisoners with offending that pre-dates the Act, as they would be released into the community on arrival into New Zealand without any specific agency support or oversight. To put it simply, I consider that this situation amounts to an absolutely unacceptable and urgent risk to public safety, and it's contrary to how Parliament always intended the Act to work," the minister said.
So the legislation amends the 2015 Act to ensure that it continues to put all returning offenders in roughly the same position they would have been in had they offended in New Zealand.
Apart from the Greens and Te Paati Māori, the Bill had widespread support in the House, but ACT's Nicole McKee expressed her party's concern about it going through under urgency…