Corrections (Mothers with Babies) Amendment Bill

I will now deal with the commencement part of the bill. When this bill went to the Law and Order Committee the commencement clause stated that the Act would come into force 90 days after the day on which it receives the Royal assent. I realise now, on reading the bill that has come back to the House, that the legislation might never come into force. There is no reason at all for us to presume that the commencement date will ever actually happen—certainly not on what we have heard so far. I say that because the commencement date in the bill presented back to the House has been amended and is now “on a date to be appointed by the Governor-General by Order in Council.” Why has this happened?

I can see from the report back to the House that there is concern that new facilities need to be constructed, and that they obviously have not been constructed yet, from what I can see in the report back to the House. There is a recommendation to the Government from the select committee that the work to make the necessary improvements should be made as soon as possible. I am not sure whether those facilities have, in fact, been built, and I would be very interested to hear from the Government or even from the proposer of the bill whether they have been built. I see that a lot of people are shaking their heads that no, they have not yet been built. So the commencement date to the bill is completely in the future. We are not working to a particular date and we have no particular reason to believe that the facilities will be in place, because the legislation is not actually in force.

That is something we should be concerned about—that we could be leading people down the garden path into thinking that there will be this provision and that we will have these facilities, when the facilities have yet to be built. Certainly it does not seem to me, on the face of it, that there is any provision whatsoever that this needs to take place by any particular time. I would be very interested to hear from others on this matter.

I concur with my colleague Judith Collins regarding the commencement date. As reported back to the House, there is an amendment to clause 2 that the actual date be appointed by the Governor-General by Order in Council because there has to be the infrastructure in place so that mothers with babies under the age of 24 months can be catered for. There are three women’s prisons in New Zealand and the current situation is that mothers can keep their babies up to the age of 6 months, but that has been a rare occurrence simply because we do not have the infrastructure for that as it stands, let alone for babies up to 24 months. I think that is an indictment on our current prison system.

There are also a lot of strings attached to this deal for mothers to be able to keep their babies for 24 months. They have to have access to facilities for counselling, and for treatment. They have to undergo drug testing, and participate in parenting education programmes. It is quite a big deal, and those facilities might not already be in place at the current time. Time is needed; the provision has to be planned for carefully. There is nothing worse than bringing something in when we are not ready for it—it will all just fall to pieces. That is not good for morale. It is not good for anybody—certainly not for a mother with a baby up to the age of 24 months. I think it was appropriate that the select committee took that into consideration and made the amendment that the date should be appointed by the Governor-General by Order in Council. That is the way forward. Hopefully the commencement date will not be extended by a very, very long time. Hopefully it will be done in a matter of months. But it is certainly the right thing to do to make sure that the right infrastructure is in place so that when mothers in prison can keep their babies up to the age of 24 months everything is set up and is there to be successful and to work.

I am grateful to the member Judith Collins for raising the point about the commencement date. I would like to seek some assurance from the Minister the Hon Phil Goff—because this is a member’s bill and it is a slightly different situation from normal—about those parts of the bill where there are provisions that do not require the building of new facilities. I know there will be debate about this under clause 5, when we deal with the Minister’s Supplementary Order Paper. Substantial parts of this bill relate to what happens with mothers with babies in prison now, without any necessary reference to the building of new facilities. I would hate to see, as the member Judith Collins said, the rest of the bill delayed indefinitely. I seek some assurance from the Minister that that will not happen.

In response to the question raised by the sponsor of the Corrections (Mothers with Babies) Amendment Bill, Sue Bradford, given that agreement has been amicably reached on the amendment to the bill that deals with the problems of affordability of the provisions, and about making final decisions when the impact of the new sentencing regime—hopefully keeping more women with children out of prison—is known, I do not see a problem in bringing this bill into effect quite early on in the piece. I do not personally have responsibility for that, so I cannot commit the Government, but I think that given we have reached agreement on support for the Supplementary Order Paper in my name, there are no particular reasons that I can see that would delay bringing this bill into effect, other than the obvious efforts of the Opposition tonight to delay getting the bill through its Committee stage.

The commencement date has been well covered and canvassed from the aspect of having adequate facilities funded and resourced so that they can meet the needs of mothers and their babies, regardless of what security status the mothers may have. There is one other thing that needs to be seriously considered, which is that it is quite appropriate that the commencement clause states: “This Act comes into force on a date to be appointed by the Governor-General by Order in Council.”, from the point of view of the special needs and training that Department of Corrections officers will require in order to care for these babies and their mothers.

We have to remember that all too often this House sees things in high-dimensional terms, and when it comes down to providing a service, sometimes our plans go awry. So from that point of view it is very appropriate that the commencement date be built around the level of ability to provide, to a very high standard, the training facilities needed by the staff who will be caring for these babies and their mothers while they are under the control of the Department of Corrections. I must commend the Law and Order Committee for obviously taking on board the submissions that would have pointed out that situation. The change the committee made was quite appropriate.

I think it will be quite a challenge to attract, train, and retain those specialist people. It will be very important as that process goes forward—not only as we build the facilities to look after the babies and their mothers adequately but also as we make sure we have the best-practice model of how that should be conducted. Again, there is a little bit of time, as we see in clause 2, which states: “on a date to be appointed by the Governor-General by Order in Council.” I think that is very appropriate, and I congratulate those people who made submissions. The select committee took them on board, and we look forward to having a well-trained staff to provide that care.

I will take only a very short call. It is very rare to see a bill come into the House with this type of date requirement in it. It is rare for a commencement clause to state: “on a date to be appointed by the Governor-General by Order in Council.”, rather than mention a specific date. We know why this is happening. It is because the facilities are not built. But we have to be aware that these facilities do have to be set up, and they have to be managed extremely well. These facilities basically have to meet the criteria and the standards required of any other institution that currently cares for children.

The prisons will need resources, such as qualified and trained staff for when mothers are attending programmes, and we know that staff resources are usually fairly rare in this particular area. The prisons will need rooms that meet the size requirements. We have to ensure that babies are kept separate from toddlers, as they are in other institutions. We also have to provide some indoor and some outdoor play areas, and, of course, there will be many other areas that have not been mentioned. These facilities will need to be added to the existing prisons, and we want to see them set up and managed extremely well. This is an area that cannot afford to fail through inadequate resources, and we were pleased to hear the reassurance from the Minister that those resources will be available. New Zealand First will be very keen to follow this debate through the Committee stage.

Clause 2 agreed to.

Clause 3 Principal Act amended