Corrections Amendment Bill (No 2)

It is worthwhile making a contribution, particularly on clauses 1, 2, and 3, including the title. I can think of a whole lot of names for this bill: the “Corrections Amendment Bill (No. 2)”, or the “Labour Sitting on its Hands and Doing Nothing Bill”, and the list could go on. Fortunately, this is a Government that is keen to progress things and get on top of this legislation. It is important to realise the parameters of this bill. We have had some very good contributions from the Committee this evening, and I thought it worthwhile summarising this bill and what it captures. It captures a lot, and it has gone through a very robust select committee process. It will toughen up what happens at the moment in the Department of Corrections, and I believe that it is very important that we do more. The Minister, Judith Collins, made a very good contribution, talking about the cellphone towers and the current plans the Minister has lined up in that regard. They are simple little things like extending the powers for searches, which one would presume was common sense. This is making another important step progressing towards that.

In regard to toughening up on contraband—we all know that this stuff is smuggled through; it is thrown over the fence. Things have to improve in that regard. We have heard the Minister talk about prohibiting communication. These prisoners are very shrewd. They can get on the cellphone or the landline and have coded conversations. Some of them can run gangs from inside the prison fence. This bill goes quite a long way towards toughening up the law in that regard.

We had very good contributions from other members on this side of the Chamber this evening. Simon Power talked about the special contribution made through the select committee process. All in all, this bill is a step in the right direction, and I commend the Minister for bringing it forward to the Chamber this evening. This is a very, very busy Government. We are getting on, and we are trying to make our communities safer.

I will make a very brief contribution to this debate about the Green Party’s opposition to the Corrections Amendment Bill (No 2). My former colleague Nandor Tanczos spoke on the bill’s first reading and was involved when this bill was at the Law and Order Committee. He opposed this legislation at the first reading on behalf of the Greens, and none of the concerns that he raised in the earlier stages have been dealt with.

I note that the Minister of Corrections spent quite some time at the beginning of the Committee stage of this bill talking about how dangerous it was for staff in prisons, but this legislation actually attacks staff in prisons. The Minister herself has displayed contempt for staff in prisons in the past, and she did so again most recently today, with her failure to show any support for the head of the Department of Corrections.

It is a bit difficult to take the Minister’s concern for prison staff seriously when she is passing legislation that will increase the powers of search in non-prisoner accessible areas, thereby increasing the level of surveillance on staff at a time when staff are under siege—that is absolutely true—when the political environment for Department of Corrections staff is extremely difficult, and when the financial support for prison staff in terms of the resources they need to manage the culture inside prisons is very difficult for them to access. What do we do? We end up passing legislation in this Chamber that makes it even more difficult for staff to feel confident that they have the confidence of this Parliament and of the community to do the job that is so important—that is, to protect the community and keep the community safe. The Green Party will not support this legislation.

I rise to add a voice in support of the Corrections Amendment Bill (No 2), in its closing stage. A lot has been made by members on the other side of the Chamber about the reduction in the number of prison escapes during the tenure of the last Government, in comparison to the number of escapes that occurred before then. The point needs to be made that people liked being in jail when Labour was in charge. We need to make another point—if prisoners do vote, they tend to vote Labour. If they take the time to vote—and they do have the opportunity to vote—it is the natural assumption one can make from looking at the demographics of those who are in jail. If people know anything about the nature of law and order issues and who is committing offences—or at least who is getting caught, why they are getting caught, and who is getting banged up; I am prepared to accept that—they tend to come from the demographic in society who vote Labour. That is just the way it is. It is stating a fact, and members opposite should not take umbrage.

This bill complements recent security and surveillance improvements, such as the new fences that the Hon Clayton Cosgrove mentioned, cameras, motion detectors, which sounds a bit messy but I guess they are there, microwave sensors, and expanded drug-dog teams. The point is that over the time of the last Government, technology increased to such a degree that it was easier to import contraband into prisons.

There has been growth in the gang population in prisons and in their ability to continue to do business there, and technology has advanced such that cellphones have become smaller and smaller, so they can be hidden in the smallest of dark and inaccessible places. The National Party was accused of having done nothing about cellphone carriage in those dark and moist places when it was previously in Government, but the fact is that the last time National was in Government cellphones were the size of a brick. It was a hell of a lot more uncomfortable then to carry one of those around, hidden on one’s person.

Over the last 9 years National has consistently highlighted the unacceptable levels of contraband within prisons. It was interesting to note, for instance, that Rachealle Nāmana, the killer of 23-month old Lillybing, who was released from prison, claimed that while she was in prison she had access to a range of drugs, including P, and she downloaded pornography on to a cellphone. In 2006 a prostitute was found on site, in the prison. An inmate had placed an order by cellphone for a prostitute to come to the prison. Again in 2006 an inmate of Christchurch Men’s Prison was sending obscene text messages to women. Of course we know that inmates have been able to intimidate witnesses and staff members, and have been able to use contraband to further their exploits while they are in prison.

It is timely that this legislation is coming through. It is an indictment on the previous Labour Government that it was unable to move forward its own legislation. It was so besotted with trying to move legislation such as the Electoral Finance Act, and the emissions trading scheme, through the House that this slipped right past. I am very pleased to be part of a Government that is moving forward with these very necessary legislative devices to be able to control behaviour in prisons. To pick up on the point made by the previous speaker from the Green Party, I say that we are very much concerned about the safety of prisoners. None of us would like to be in jail, and none of us would like our family members to be there, but the fact is that prisoners are at risk when they are in jail and they need to be kept safe. That is the nature of holding people in custody.

But we also need to be very concerned about the ability to intimidate and to assault people who are employed within the corrections system. We know that people have been intimidated. Staff members have been contacted at home, and the heavy has been put on them to carry contraband into prisons. We notice too, with the proclivity of gang involvement in prisons and around prison areas, that they have access almost whenever they want it to get contraband in and out of jails, one way or another, using mules to carry it. It is interesting to note, too, the ability of gangs to intimidate people who live in State houses, as reported on the front page of the Dominion Post last week. Of course, this occurred at Pōmare, which is not very far at all from Rimutaka Prison. Those gang members who have taken over a whole neighbourhood are very much in danger of taking over whole prisons. This legislation is a timely antidote for the suppurating mess that our prisons have become under the previous Government.