Corrections Amendment Bill (No 2)

Hey look, here is a bill—the Corrections Amendments Bill (No 2)—that has actually been sent to select committee! The first for the Government? I am quite impressed—although it was the old Government that sent it to select committee, and not this Government. So there we go, the first one—on the last sitting day of this year we are able to debate a bill that has actually had some kind of public scrutiny. Yay! It is about time.

The Green Party opposes this legislation. It is a mixed bag. We have liked some bits and we have had some concerns about some other parts. My colleague Nandor Tanczos delivered the first reading speech on this bill. He raised issues that we wanted to see addressed in the select committee. Unfortunately, although there was a good select committee process for the bill, those issues were not addressed, and on that basis we are not able to support it.

I shall go through a couple of those issues in my address today. One of them that has raised a bit of an ugly head over the last week, when we think about the issues involved in it, concerns the opportunity or the ability to look into prisoners’ mail. There is a justification for doing that where there are real issues about whether criminal activity is being discussed—that is a fair enough approach. But the legislation does not provide for any kinds of constraints. In fact, it just identifies justification as prejudice to the maintenance of law. Nandor Tanczos quite rightly raised the issue that any kind of political activity, even the desire to change the law in a perfectly legitimate way—whether it is a political way or even a legal way—could be considered by Department of Corrections staff who make these assessments to be of some kind of prejudice to the maintenance of the existing law.

This provision opens up the opportunity for staff to look at any mail and to make assessments about the political interests of inmates. That is a serious issue about human rights. Inmates are not stripped entirely of their rights when they go to prison. They are entitled to be engaged in political activity, if that is what they choose to do, and to pursue legal issues if that is what they want to do. Mr Garrett, of course, has a very radical and very extremist attitude to prison issues. But a sensible attitude to prison is that when an offender offends and gets a prison sentence it is the denial of his or her liberty that is the punishment, and not the denial of dignity—not the denial of human rights. In fact, what we find and what know to be the case is that the more time people spend in prison being denied any kind of ability to rehabilitate, to deal with the issues that have led them there—all of those things—they are more likely to reoffend, once they have left prison. Prison is not, obviously, a place for dealing with issues of reoffending, because it actually leads to more reoffending later on.

None the less, that is not the issue I want to address here; the issue is about the ability for Department of Corrections staff to investigate mail. We have just had an exposé of the police, in particular, using spies and narks to spy on political organisations, legitimate political organisations, and even political parties such as the Green Party—cops could easily get on the Green Party’s mailing list. We will send people stuff if they want to hear about what we are doing. One does not have to use a spy or a nark to be sent our press releases, or our campaigning information, because we like to tell people what we are doing. We are a very open and transparent party. But instead of using proper processes we have police using spies and narks to do that instead.

In that context, then, and having prisoners also subject to that kind of political scrutiny by Department of Corrections authorities, potentially by the police, is a real issue and that was not dealt with in select committee. We would have liked to see some reasonable discussion of that in the select committee process. That did not happen. That is one of the reasons why we cannot support this bill.

The second reason raised by my colleague was about the extension of search powers for non-prison areas—areas where prisoners do not go but staff do. We have heard from Phil Goff about the concerns of staff bringing in contraband. That is a fair enough concern and there does need to be a process for managing that. I have spent a reasonable amount of time visiting the new Milton Prison. I have visited a number of prisons around the country. The Milton Prison is very close to where I live in Dunedin. In my experience, those staff are fantastic. They are working in a very new environment, a new physical environment that helps to build and retain the dignity of the staff.

In the select committee process we were looking for changes that would at least identify some reason why those staff areas might be searched by other authorities. There are no safeguards for the privacy of those Department of Corrections staff, or for the employment rights in that relationship. There is no requirement, for example, that the search be conducted on reasonable grounds, that there has been a problem with that staff member or staff in that institution. There are no grounds to suspect at all in the legislation, so it is an absolutely free power by authorities to investigate and search those staff areas with no consideration at all for the fact that those staff are working in a very difficult, very tense, and highly politically contentious environment. Yet they are trying to do their best for both the offenders in the institution and for maintaining a high standard in those institutions.

This legislation comes at a time when there are increasing attacks on Department of Corrections staff. There have been law changes that will increase the muster in prison. There have been threats by National—by the Minister of Corrections and the Minister of Justice—to have a process of double bunking in prisons, which directly puts corrections staff at serious risk in those prisons when we have the doubling of numbers in a prison environment, increased stress, increased violence, and increased aggression.

National has been highly critical of corrections staff, and with any institution of that size and with those kinds of conditions there will always be the occasional problems. That does not justify the kinds of criticisms from National. The chief executive has been called to resign by National—almost on a weekly basis. National opposed staff bonuses in 2007. Simon Power has called them incompetent, describing blunder after blunder, and giving no support at all for those staff. This legislation is another step towards removing the kind of support that those staff need in order to do a good job.

In the kind of environment that they are in, and with the responsibilities that they have, they must be well-paid, well-supported, and at least trusted to some extent to do their job properly. This legislation strips away all of that trust. It also leads on to the very real concern that is proposed by National about the privatisation of prisons. We have had one privately run prison in this country. We campaigned to stop that from being able to be continued, and the private management was taken out of that prison, and for good reason—particularly about the staffing issues. Our concern is about staffing issues for Department of Corrections staff.

In the public sector we have had massive levels of resignations from the Department of Corrections over the last little while. In some areas 40 percent of staff have less than 2 years’ experience in their role. Why would we have experienced people wanting to do that work, to do those jobs in such a difficult environment, if there is such a low level of trust from this Parliament and from the institution itself? In terms of private prisons we have even worse examples. The Australasian correctional management company that ran the remand prison in Auckland had an appalling international reputation of unsafe work practices. In fact, it was the organisation that lost a court case when a staff member took the company to court for unsafe work practices. It is owned by an international organisation, Wackenhut Corporation, which runs a whole range of prisons around the world known for assaults on staff, retaliation issues, contraband inside prisons, the silencing of witnesses in prisons, withholding of information that has been required by the court in prison, and a massive turnover of staff.

If we are to have the kind of safe and secure environment in our correctional institutions, where offenders need to be treated well enough, such that they retain some dignity, so that when they leave prison they are less likely to reoffend, we need to have staff who feel secure in their jobs, who are well respected by the community, and who are not undermined every day by this Parliament. It is not only Ministers making comments about those staff, saying that they are terrible, but also putting law in place that undermines that trust. We will not be supporting this bill.

I rise on behalf of the ACT Party to support the Corrections Amendment Bill (No 2), which was introduced by the previous Government and is now supported by the current Government. This bill is a very good illustration of what is wrong with our system. I will leaf through it quickly, as it is quite a big document. The explanatory note—and of course the Law and Order Committee was dominated by Labour members—states that new section 79(3) “allows the possible use of alcohol in both Christian and non-Christian religious ceremonies …”. That is utter, utter naivety. Do people really believe that the motivation for wanting alcohol is religious? Come on! It is just absolute nonsense.

💬 Hon Darren Hughes: For the Catholic prisoners it definitely is.

I was born a Catholic, I say to Mr Hughes, and we never had wine with Communion.

It is actually quite possible, if one changes one’s philosophy, to eliminate cellphones and drugs completely from prisons. I say that because I have seen it. I was in Arizona and California last year, looking at the prison systems. I am not talking about the tent jails, although I thought they were a pretty good idea; I am talking about ordinary jails, such as we have here. There are some quite crucial differences. I visited a high-rise jail in Arizona. I was with former MP Stephen Franks. We talked to the senior guards and to the ordinary rank and file guards. We wandered around the prison at will. We were not shepherded by minders. We were told we could talk to anyone we liked, including the prisoners, incidentally. I remember asking one of the guards about the extent of the cellphone problem in the prison. The Americans are polite people, and the guard said: “They are not allowed cellphones, sir.” We said: “Yes, we understand that, but how many do you find?”. The guard said: “Excuse me? The prisoners are not allowed cellphones, sir.” Once he had worked out what we were asking him, the answer was none—zero.

💬 Hon Darren Hughes: Ha, ha!

In a moment I will tell Mr Hughes why that is.

We then went on to the issue of drugs. We asked what percentage of positive drug tests they found. Another of the guards said: “Yes, we drug test.” We asked: “What percentage of positive results do you get?”. One guard asked the other: “Hey Randy, didn’t we get one last year?”. We said: “What, 1 percent?”. He replied: “Oh no, sir, one positive result.” I will tell members how they do it. It is quite easy. Firstly, the prisoners do not have contact visits. Even lawyers are required to sit in a room next to the prisoner. There is a small slit, sufficient to put perhaps a 5 or 6-page affidavit through, but otherwise there are no contact visits. That is one way to ensure that there are simply no cellphone or drug problems in the prison. However, it is probably possible to get LSD embedded in a paper and passed through by a corrupt or crooked lawyer. That is probably possible.

The next reason why there are no cellphone or drug problems in this prison is punishment. Ms Turei said—and this is an old sore—that offenders go to prison as a punishment, but not for punishment. That remark sounds wonderful to middle-class people like all the members here, because deprivation of liberty for us would be a huge punishment. Deprivation of the right to go down to the dairy on Sunday morning and get the paper, or call in and have a beer on the way home, would be a major incursion on us. But for some people it does not matter—they do not care. So that remark just demonstrates a complete lack of understanding of the reality. It is possible to eliminate cellphones and drugs from prisons, and that is how it is done. There are no contact visits, even with lawyers.

The other issue is punishment for breaches. Arizona and California have the systems that we used to have here. If someone is found to have broken the rules, he or she is punished—solitary confinement and a No. 1 diet. We used to do that too, and, funnily enough, we did not have anywhere near as much crime. I wonder why! In Arizona, prisoners lose various rights. Our prisoners lose the right to vote. Mr Hughes might like to help me—he is a very voluble chap—by telling me of any other rights they lose. But in Arizona prisoners lose the right to have the haircut they like, they lose the right to wear the clothes they like, they lose the right to smoke, they lose the right to have salt on their food—I cannot quite understand that one, quite frankly—and they lose the right to have tomato sauce.

The crucial point is that the Arizonians and the Californians accept that criminals, by their actions, have deprived themselves of rights. They should not and do not have the same level of rights as the rest of us. [Interruption] This is not a campaign speech, I say to Mr Hughes. It is a new one. This is a good start.

Prisoners also lose the right to privacy. I was talking to a prominent defence lawyer before the election. He is not an ACT supporter and did not vote for us. He told us that in his opinion the loss of the right to privacy, as occurs in the Arizona prison, would be a major deterrent here. He pointed out to me that frequently in court—I do not practise criminal law so I am going on what he said—the prosecution will ask for a deterrent sentence. The judge will ask: “Well, who’s it going to deter? The only ones here are the convict, the lawyers, and me. No one is going to know. Where is the deterrent, Mr Prosecutor?”. My friend, whom I will not name, said that he believes that if they did here what is done in Arizona, which is that on conviction a prisoner’s name, photograph, crime committed, and sentence given go straight on to the website, it would be a deterrent. This was from a person who makes his living solely from defending criminals. He said that losing the right to privacy, among other things, would be a far more effective deterrent than a lot of the things we do now.

I want to touch on the Hon Phil Goff’s point about the causes of crime. We hear about this all the time. In my maiden speech I spoke about the “unemployment causes crime” myth, and I want to expand on that and go on to another point.

💬 Hon Darren Hughes: You quoted yourself in your last speech.

This is a new speech, I say to Mr Hughes. He will not hear anything familiar. Those on the left say, and they have said it a couple of times, that the safe society of the 1960s was illusory. It was illusory because there was a huge level of unreported family and sexual violence. I was trying to follow Mr Goff’s logic. If that is right, if in the past we had hidden violent crime because it was all happening in the home, that is a very easy argument to make. We can never prove or disprove it—it was all hidden, so we did not know about it, if that is where it was really happening.

I heard the Hon Phil Goff a second ago ask what we are going to do about this terrible epidemic that is coming—abused children becoming the next generation of criminals. There is a fault of logic there, because if that is the real cause, why was it not happening in the 1960s? Or does hidden violence only cause hidden violence? I do not know about that. It does not seem right. It is faulty logic. This bill is a good start and we have no problem supporting it, but it is no more than a good start.

I was in the Chamber listening to the Leader of the Opposition, and I have to say that I think he lives in some kind of alternative reality. He should spend his time writing a book, because his speech would be the alternative reality where Labour did not actually lose the election, and where all of the claims he makes about the wonders of the previous Government would be miraculously absolved by the public not voting. All they would have to do is say: “Actually, Phil was right. Everything was wonderful under Labour.”

I have to say to Mr Goff that when I was out in the community, I found the public to be deeply disturbed about the previous Government’s record on crime. They wanted a fundamental change to that situation. They rejected Labour on this issue. The key reason for this was that there was a 47 percent increase in violent crime. Labour members should be ashamed of that statistic. Those members need to reflect on why violent crime increased so much in their 9 years in office. I guess they will say that it was all the fault of the previous National Government. But 9 years is too long to allow a Government to absolve itself of its responsibilities.

I will remind Labour of another fundamental failure on its part: prison construction costs. The former Minister of Corrections, Phil Goff, talked about building four new prisons. What he was not going to say, however, was that they cost more than $1 million per cell. [Interruption] Members opposite laugh about that. They do not care that it cost $1 million per cell; it is just a point of mirth for them. Well, the public was outraged that it wasted expenditure with the so-called new contracting system, and collaborative working systems, as if that would be the pathway to controlling costs. In fact, it proved to be the pathway to costs going completely out of control. It was yet another example, I guess, of the alternative reality that that party inhabits right now. Clearly we could do better than that. It is not so difficult to do better than spending $1 million on each cell.

The Auckland Central Remand Prison is interesting. It has been hugely successfully managed privately for a number of years now. That prison was modelled on the standard US county jail. Obviously, the previous Government did not seem to understand that there are cost-effective approaches to building prisons. It went for the $1 million per cell approach. That prison houses about 230 prisoners. It cost about $50 million. Members should think of the difference in cost: less than quarter of a million dollars per cell.

💬 Hon Phil Goff: Hey, the member’s a fool. That prison was built by the public sector. It wasn’t built by the private sector.

Yes, but it was based on a cost-effective method, and it was well managed by private contractors. I would just remind members on the other side of the House that there are much better ways than those of the failed former Minister of Corrections, who is temporarily inhabiting the role of Leader of the Opposition.

I will conclude by making some remarks on the Corrections Amendment Bill (No 2). Yes, there are some things that the parties in Parliament can work together on. Clearly we need to monitor prisoners’ mail, and we need to deal with the issue of cellphones, and so forth. Those are things that there is consensus on. Not every single thing that we deal with in Parliament divides parties.

I would just like members on the other side to understand why they are sitting on the other side. One of the very first things we learnt in Opposition was that, in order to change our situation, we had to be able to understand where we had gone wrong. Labour members clearly have a huge amount of learning to do in that regard, because they have spent the last 2 weeks telling us about how wonderful they had been, about how they had got everything right, and that nothing they had done was wrong. They simply do not understand why they are sitting where they are at the moment, and I suggest they will have to do some pretty deep thinking over the next several years to understand why they are there. I would say that that is a lesson particularly for the Leader of the Opposition to learn. He of all people, as a new leader, needs to reflect on his failures—to reflect on why there was a 47 percent increase in violent crime and why prison spending got completely out of control. If he thought about that, then we would hear a little less bluff and bluster and a little more humility from him. Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker.

Before I begin, I would not mind reflecting for a moment on the speech made by Mr Garrett. We heard a lot in his speech about Arizona; I enjoyed his very comprehensive rundown of the system there. However, during my 6 months spent living in Arizona, I frequently noted along the highways where the prisons were located that there were signs—as often as the signs we have here indicating speed limits—that stated: “Do not stop and pick up passengers. Prisoners likely to be roaming free.” I do not know whether we would wish to make that kind of comparison. I will draw a comparison later on in my comments by noting that, in fact, there have in the past been similarities between our prison system and that of Arizona, based on the number of escapes, but I will come back to that.

Before I begin my contribution on the Corrections Amendment Bill (No 2), I will briefly review the history that this bill has gone through. As my colleague Metiria Turei pointed out, this is a novel bill for this new term of Parliament. I recognise that the Minister of Justice, Mr Power, may criticise the lack of speed. That is interesting, given our criticism that there has been too much speed from the National Government side of the House in the consideration of some of the bills we have had so far. Just in order to give a little lesson on Government process, I say this bill was introduced on 3 December 2007. We followed up, after the Christmas break, with its first reading on 21 February and, despite the widespread support for the bill and the fact that many members in this House agreed with what we were doing, we chose to send it to a select committee. The bill was referred to the Law and Order Committee, and now it has been referred back to this House.

However, I congratulate my colleagues in National on taking up this bill. I will restate what the leader of the Labour Party has clearly articulated, which is that when the Government puts forth legislation that we think is in the best interests of New Zealanders, we will support it. In this situation, given that we wrote the bill, we do believe that the policy it represents is in the best interests of New Zealanders. Hence it has our support.

I will just reflect on the context in which the bill was introduced. At the time of the introduction of the bill we noted that the Corrections Act 2004 was working well, and we are still of that opinion. We have seen, since the Act’s introduction—and well beyond that, in fact, as the Labour leader has already outlined—that the number of prison escapes has dropped by a massive 84 percent. I say to Mr Garrett that there is no need to have road signs like those in Arizona in New Zealand, because when we compare this situation with the situation we had 10 years ago, we see that we have made massive improvements in that area. That has happened through taking proactive measures, like having a single point of entry and perimeter fencing at our prisons.

💬 Hon Darren Hughes: Good ideas.

Those are good ideas, which are working well. Drug taking is also something that I, like my colleagues, want to reflect on. It is far, far less common than what we saw in 1999. Let me throw out a number, because I do not want speeches from members on this side of the House to be full of empty rhetoric and wind. We do have numbers: 34 percent of prisoners were testing positive for drugs in 1999. We now have a much lower rate of positive testing. There has been a doubling in the number of drug-dog teams in our prisons, which has made a massive difference.

Putting all of that into context is the fact that our prison muster has increased. It has increased, and now that National is in Government, the National members have acknowledged that. We have a higher prison muster than previously, and that is down to the reforms made by Labour while it was in Government. The changes we made to parole, sentencing, and bail have seen a greater number of people serving longer sentences in our prisons. Despite that, we have made miraculous gains in the way that our corrections system is operating. I would just like members to reflect on that. But being the humble Government that we were, we recognised that further improvements could be made, and that is why we put forward this bill.

We believe that legislation needs to be based on objectives, and we had two aims when we put forward this bill. A novel idea, which I would like to share with members opposite, is that a Government can set out some objectives and principles before it puts forward legislation. I also invite them to reflect that it might have been useful to outline the problem they were trying to fix with the last two bills we have seen. We did that with regard to this bill. We said our No. 1 aim was to enhance the safety and security of prisons, and we wanted to do that through a reduction in the amount of contraband and the suppression of cellphone use. Our No. 2 objective was to improve the provision for agencies to share information about the highest risk offenders. We had a very good reason for doing that; it was about their reintegration into our communities. The No. 1 aim in all of our justice legislation, which members will see as they review it, was the safety of the community. [Interruption] It has always been our highest priority, I say to Mr Garrett. That is why we made provision in this bill for the sharing of information: to ensure that during reintegration we place greater emphasis on the safety of the community.

I am pleased to see that those principles were then turned into action. Members will note that the bill is quite a lengthy one, based on what we wanted to achieve. I know the National Government is trying to keep bills to one or two pages at best, but we thought we would broaden this bill out a bit.

💬 Hon Darren Hughes: All their ideas together.

That is right—all of the National Government’s ideas are contained in a maximum of one or two clauses, but we thought we would go a little beyond that.

Let us take a quick look at what we proposed on contraband, at our attempt to reduce the circulation of drugs, alcohol, money, weapons, and electronic devices in prison. Our provisions allowed for the searching of staff lockers. They amended the definition of “strip search”, and provided for strip searching when a prisoner is to be retested for drugs and alcohol, and before and after parole hearings. They provided for retesting where a sample provided by a prisoner during drug and alcohol testing is diluted, tainted, or otherwise contaminated, and strengthened the provisions around tampering with a sample or possessing items that could be used to tamper with a sample. They introduced new provisions relating to unauthorised electronic communication devices, including making it an imprisonable offence for a prisoner to use or possess an electronic communication device without authorisation. They also introduced a new offence for any person to knowingly possess an unauthorised item while in prison.

That is quite a hefty list. I think members will agree it could not be confused with window dressing.

💬 Hon Phil Goff: That’s right. This is real.

These are real provisions, and they were introduced to make real changes to our system. That is why I again congratulate the Government on taking on this legislation, which will genuinely improve our prisons and corrections system.

I will very briefly reflect on some of the things that came back from the Law and Order Committee, because it is a novelty to have the opportunity to do so. I will take a few paragraphs from the second reading speech of the previous Minister of Corrections. I did ask his permission before reading these excerpts, and Mr Finlayson may like to take note of that. The committee notably strengthened the forfeiture provisions, so that a visiting justice or adjudicator may order the forfeiture of anything that has been used to commit an offence, and it also increased penalties.

Again, I commend the Government for taking on this bill. The bill has our support for good reasons, which are that we wrote it and we think it will improve the corrections system. In my closing remarks, I join the Labour leader in calling for a broader debate on justice and corrections issues. We looked beyond this legislation to the development of an employment programme for our corrections facilities. As the Opposition spokesperson on youth justice, I look forward to hearing the proposals from members opposite on what else the Government will do to ensure that our prison muster decreases, not because of changes in sentencing and parole but because the Government invests more time, energy, and resources in early intervention.

I congratulate my colleague Jacinda Ardern, who has just resumed her seat, for her opening remarks on Mr Garrett’s experiences in Arizona. When she spoke I thought to myself briefly that either Mr Garrett was a very naive member, which is quite possible, or he went around Arizona with his eyes closed—and Jacinda has just confirmed that possibly he did. When he said that he travelled with his former colleague Stephen Franks I thought “Well, no wonder they saw nothing apart from the birds and the trees and the flowers growing in the gardens in Arizona.” There was not much value in that trip whatsoever—but back to planet Earth, and please excuse my manners, Mr Deputy Speaker. This is my first opportunity to take a call in the forty-ninth Parliament, and let me first acknowledge your appointment to Deputy Speaker, as well as the appointments of the Assistant Speakers and the Speaker, the Hon Dr Lockwood Smith.

It has been an interesting debate around the quality of the parliamentary process in terms of scrutiny of legislation. As mentioned previously by a number of speakers on the Opposition side of the House, the Corrections Amendment Bill (No 2) is one of the first bills we have debated during this urgency that has been through the select committee process. Although I want to acknowledge the members of the Law and Order Committee, chaired by the former New Zealand First member of Parliament Ron Mark, I also need to acknowledge the contributions made by the current Minister of Justice, Simon Power, and the other committee members who were part of that process. I found it unusual that although three written submissions came to the committee, only one submission was heard. I think that means that only one asked for an oral hearing at the select committee. It is surprising what we learn about the real world when we allow the process to go its full course. We learn about people who are out there in the community and who have firsthand knowledge of what is actually going on in our corrections system, whether they are current or former corrections staff. Of course, it is very difficult for those people to approach a select committee.

I will say one thing about the select committee process. There is an assumption by a number of MPs and various parties in this House that they have the solutions to all the problems, and that there is no need to consult with our wider communities to give us some direction on how we should resolve these matters. I will give it to the former Ministers of Corrections and the Labour-led Government that we valued that process very, very much. Therefore it is only fitting for me to acknowledge the previous Minister of Corrections, Phil Goff, and his predecessors. I will mention them one by one: the Hon Mark Gosche, who was also a Minister of Corrections; the Hon Paul Swain, who was a Minister of Corrections as well; the Hon Damien O’Conner; and the previous Minister of Corrections, the Hon Phil Goff.

💬 Hon Darren Hughes: The member’s left out the Associate Minister!

I was getting to the Associate Minister. The previous Minister of Corrections, Phil Goff, who is now the Leader of the Opposition, also played a very firm part in dealing with many of the problems within our corrections institutions. Of course, as the Opposition whip said, there was the role of the previous Associate Minister of Corrections, who outlived, I think, four of those Ministers.

💬 Hon Phil Goff: There’s a statement in that.

I think that makes a statement about endurance and commitment to the job.

I am a former probation officer, and I was also Associate Minister of Corrections. During that period as a probation officer I had the opportunity to go into some of our institutions and get firsthand experience of what is actually going on within our prison system, to sit down and talk to corrections staff, and to talk to inmates through their appointed spokespeople. It is surprising what one hears. We have had a wide debate in the House today about the value of this bill. There is wide support across the House, although I think there is a bit of what we call “tōtara wāhi rua” on behalf of some people—they are not too sure what they are supporting. It is interesting that in my view there is not a broad understanding within the House of what actually happens within corrections institutions. I think the new Minister of Corrections might benefit from paying a visit on regular occasions to our institutions to get a firsthand look and some experience of what is actually going on, and to talk to people within the institutions about problems they have and possible solutions.

My primary role as the previous Associate Minister of Corrections was to deal with Māori inmates, who are the massive majority of our current inmate population.

Sitting suspended from 1 p.m. to 2 p.m.

Debate interrupted.