Alexander: Increased supervision a good start

United Future's Marc Alexander today congratulated Justice Minister Phil Goff on proposed new parole changes for paedophiles, despite Mr Goff's acknowledgement that they may cut across some aspects of the Bill of Rights.

"This should never be done lightly, but as a society I think we need to look at whose rights we are so keen to protect, and for too long we have had gone to ridiculous lengths for the rights of offenders, with a complete imbalance in terms of the rights of victims.

"Indeed all too often, so called rights of offenders lead to there being victims in the first place - something that was all to obvious in the case of a twice-convicted Palmerston North paedophile and his bedroom assault on a young woman recently as a supervisor stood outside worrying about the man's privacy rights."

Mr Alexander gave broad assent to increased supervision - "in principle at least, but frankly who can have confidence that it will actually be done in any adequate fashion?"

"Appropriate and reasonable use of preventative detention, and 15 years, rather than 10, would be better options. But at least git's a step ahead of where we are," he said.

© Scoop Media