KEY POINTS:
National's new "victim compensation scheme" has got the jump on Labour by offering action while the Government has buried the issue in its too-hard basket, the Law Commission.
The scheme announced by National leader John Key yesterday is not really a "compensation" scheme at all. It will merely pay for some of the victims' expenses. But it is something concrete to offer in an election year when the Law Commission has yet to say anything about how it will respond to a Government order two weeks ago "to look at the issue of compensation and state-funded reparation".
All parties recognise that the justice system does not work as well as it should for victims.
An 18-month inquiry by Parliament's justice and electoral committee, completed in December, found that reparation orders against offenders fail to compensate many victims for their losses, counselling is inadequate, legal advice and information are limited, and court processes often retraumatise victims by making them face their offenders again, often sitting next to the offender's friends.
Only 31 per cent of reparation orders are collected in the first year. Although 90 per cent is collected within 10 years, often in instalments as low as $10 a week, the lengthy collection process may extend the victim's trauma almost indefinitely.
Accident compensation (ACC) creates anomalies. It covers all costs, including counselling and lost income, for personal injuries. But if you are merely mentally traumatised by being held at knifepoint on your way home, ACC won't pay anything unless it's a sexual offence or, under a bill now before Parliament, the offence occurs at your workplace.
This gap is only partly filled by the largely volunteer-based Victim Support network, which gets $5.4 million a year to provide support and advocacy for victims, pay their costs of travel to court or parole hearings, and provide discretionary grants and counselling to the families of murder and manslaughter victims.
Victim Support acting chief executive Heather Verry says an extra $5 million from National's proposed $50 levy on every convicted criminal would cover the cost of extending counselling to all victims who need it. "Counselling ... is where the gap is," she said.
Justice Minister Annette King says she took a proposal to a Cabinet committee yesterday to extend legal aid to victims in limited cases such as parole hearings and coroners' inquests and expects to announce decisions next week. Court processes in sexual abuse cases will be reviewed by a taskforce set up last July.
But state funding of up-front reparation, to be recovered from offenders later, has been referred to the Law Commission because of what the Government calls "significant policy and fiscal implications", such as the effect on private insurance.
In politics, such a vacuum is there for Oppositions to fill. National has jumped right into it.
* Simon Collins is the Herald's social issues reporter.
