Corrections (Contract Management of Prisons) Amendment Bill

I move, That the Corrections (Contract Management of Prisons) Amendment Bill be now read a third time. This bill puts in place the Government’s policy to allow competitive tendering for contract management of prisons on a case by case basis. The Government wants New Zealand to have a world-class corrections system. We believe that allowing for contract management of prisons will create much-needed opportunities for the entire system to benefit from outside-sector initiative and expertise. We want a contract manager to support and enhance the Department of Corrections’ overall performance in providing for safer communities and reducing reoffending. Contract management will allow learning to be gained and shared throughout the prison system, so that all prisons become more effective and efficient as a result. We will ensure that real gains are made in providing opportunities to improve outcomes for Māori who encounter the prison system.

The previous experience that New Zealand had with contracting out prison management at the Auckland Central Remand Prison earlier this decade was generally positive. In particular, the Department of Corrections was able to retain many of the innovations introduced by the contract manager. This bill strikes a good balance between a flexible contracting framework that will encourage innovation and the protections needed to ensure public accountability. While providing for a number of different safeguards, the bill also gives scope to contracting parties to negotiate the specific terms and conditions of their contracts with relative flexibility. This is important because the management of each of New Zealand’s prisons will differ depending on the unique characteristics of the prisoners at that prison, its geographical locality, and the interventions to reduce reoffending operating within that prison. Very few of our prisons are exactly the same, and the bill provides room for contractors and the chief executive of the department to agree on how the needs of any one or more of our prisons can best be met.

Much of the debate on this bill has focused on the safeguards needed to ensure that the contract manager is held accountable. It is worth canvassing the most significant of those again. Because the changes reflected in the bill will sit under the umbrella of the Corrections Act 2004, they must be carried out in a way that is consistent with the principles of that Act. Those principles guide the operation of all of the corrections system, including contract-managed prisons. The principles include the maintenance of public safety as the paramount consideration and also involve the fair treatment of prisoners, their rehabilitation, and their reintegration. As with public prisons, contract prisons will have to comply with all relevant New Zealand legislation. This includes contractual obligations to comply with the Corrections Act and the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act, as well as all relevant international obligations and standards. Another key feature of the Corrections Act is the accountability that it sheets home to the chief executive of the Department of Corrections. Prisoners remain in the legal custody of the chief executive at all times. That will not change when a prisoner is held in a prison managed under contract. The performance management regime is set out in the bill. The contract must specify objectives and performance standards for the management of the prison and for the care of the prisoners in that prison. The bill states explicitly that they may not be any lower than the objectives or standards already required of prisons managed by the department.

One of the primary features of the bill is the way in which it supports the chief executive’s accountability by establishing the role of prison monitors. That is one of the areas that received the most scrutiny when the bill was at the Law and Order Committee, and the monitors regime now in the bill is comprehensive. The bill establishes three different types of prison monitor: primary monitors, who are located at the prison and monitor its compliance with the terms of its management contract and with the law on a day-to-day basis; those who assist the primary monitors to undertake their role as and when required, which means that there will always be sufficient staff resource available to properly oversee the activities of contractors; and specialist monitors with particular expertise in different areas, who are appointed from time to time to investigate certain matters if and when they come to light. Examples of the sorts of monitors who might be appointed in this context include the department’s anti-corruption team; its national intelligence unit; specialist health care staff, who could be appointed to review health services that might be run by the contract prison; or experts in the provision of services for Māori, who could review the suitability of the contractor’s Māori-focused initiatives.

All of these different types of monitors have significant powers of access to staff, prisoners, prison records, and all parts of the prison itself at any time of the day or night. They are all appointed by, and report directly to, the chief executive, effectively acting as his or her eyes and ears in the prison at all times. In addition, contractors will be required to provide reports on all serious incidents within the prison involving escapes, escape attempts, or prisoner deaths, to provide regular reports on the use of disciplinary powers within the prison and the outcome of all disciplinary proceedings taken against prisoners and/or staff, and to provide reports providing the details and results of all random drug testing that has been carried out within the prison.

During the select committee deliberations on the bill, and subsequently during the bill’s second reading debate, a number of concerns were raised about the issues of public accountability and parliamentary scrutiny. I would like to point out that prisons managed under contract will be subject to the terms of the Official Information Act 1982 in exactly the same way as the department currently is. Contract prisons will also be subject to the Ombudsmen Act in exactly the same way as prisons managed by the department. That means that prisoners will continue to have the right to complain to the Ombudsman about any aspect of their management or treatment, and the Ombudsman will continue to have the power to conduct independent investigations into the management and treatment of prisoners where it is appropriate to do so. Furthermore, the Auditor-General is able, at any time, to investigate the way in which the department is managing any and all of its prison management contracts, and, for that purpose, has access to all relevant documentation held by the contracted prison managers. The bill also requires every prison management contract or variation to it to be tabled in Parliament within 12 sitting days, which will ensure that all the detail of that contract, or any variation of that contract, is publicly available.

The bill protects the interests of staff working for a contract manager. The bill requires contract prison managers to comply with the requirements of those parts of the State Sector Act that invoke the requirement to be a good employer. Under the provisions of the bill, it will be a contractual requirement for each contract prison manager to appoint and train sufficient suitable staff to enable the contractor to carry out its statutory and contractual obligations. This is a very important qualifier. Not only must sufficient staff be appointed to enable the contractor to carry out its various obligations properly, but also they must also be suitable staff. They must also be appropriately trained on an ongoing basis. The contractor must regularly report on appointments and training so that the prison monitor and chief executive can monitor their performance.

The bill also makes a specific point of protecting the interests of staff who are members of the Government Superannuation Fund. It ensures that existing staff who transfer their employment to contract prison managers are still deemed to be in Government employment for the purposes of their Government superannuation fund entitlements.

The treatment of prisoners is also well covered. The chief executive of the department will remain responsible for all prisoners in New Zealand and accountable for what happens to them. That includes prisoners held in prisons managed under contract. Contract prison managers must comply with the same obligations and standards as public prison managers. If they do not, they will be in breach of their contract. Prisoners will also have the right of redress directly against the chief executive, who remains answerable for what happens to them while they are in the custody of the private provider. The continuing role of the Office of the Ombudsmen also provides further protection for prisoners.

The bill has been further enhanced during the select committee’s consideration by the committee’s recognition of the importance of providing prisoners with employment and skills development. Employment and skills development are essential activities that help prisoners with their eventual reintegration back into the community, and the committee agreed that those things should be recognised in their own right. The bill now requires contractors to provide specific reports on the provision of employment and skills development to prisoners, alongside the pre-existing requirement to report on rehabilitative and reintegration programmes.

Finally, the bill makes an important provision for the department’s ongoing relationships with other State agencies to continue, unaffected by the fact that some of its prisons will be managed by private sector providers in the future. A number of other Government agencies, such as the New Zealand Police, the Ministry of Social Development, and the Department of Labour, rely on information about offenders provided by the Department of Corrections in order to perform their own statutory functions and duties. The bill ensures that that information will continue to flow as it needs to between staff at prisons managed under contract to the Department of Corrections and relevant Government agencies.

Opening up prison management to tender will enable the Government to reap the benefits of innovation in the prison system as a whole. In keeping with the principles of the Corrections Act, this bill will improve public safety and contribute to the maintenance of a just society by contributing to the safe, secure, humane, and effective containment of prisoners. This bill will provide an effective statutory framework for the regulation and control of prisons managed under contract in New Zealand. I am committed to its successful implementation. I now commend this bill to the House for its third reading.

The quality of the debate justifying the passage of this Corrections (Contract Management of Prisons) Amendment Bill has been very poor. Essentially, Government members have taken every mention of the failure of the private sector internationally as a reflection being cast on the quality of our own judiciary and our own Public Prisons Service, when in fact the opposite is true. Our position on this side of the House supports the integrity of our prison service and the independence and integrity of our judiciary. We have argued a philosophical view, and it is quite clear that there is an ideological divide across the House. Our view is that the deprivation of liberty is one of those core State functions that should not be contracted out.

I believe that international jurisprudence is coming in behind to support the view that we would present. I know that it is not popular with members of the Government, because, essentially, they do not believe that any human rights arguments are available to be debated on this subject, but that is not the case internationally. I have warned the Government of the implications of the Supreme Court of Israel’s decision to overturn the privatisation measures that had been undertaken there. But these warnings have been ignored by the Government. I want to remind members of what they say, because I think it is worth writing it into the record.

Essentially, the argument was that the Supreme Court of Israel would not normally intervene in economic policies, but in this case the President of the Supreme Court held that the legislation harmed basic constitutional rights. Israel’s basic legal principles hold that the right to use force in general, and the right to enforce criminal law by putting people behind bars in particular, is one of the most fundamental and most invasive powers in the State’s jurisdiction. Thus when the power to incarcerate is transferred to a private corporation whose purpose is making money, the act of depriving a person of his liberty loses much of its legitimacy. Because of this loss of legitimacy, the violation of the prisoner’s right to liberty goes beyond the violation entailed in the incarceration itself. Efficiency, she wrote, is not a supreme value when the most basic and important human rights for which the State is responsible are at stake. I know that members opposite do not like listening to the learned words of a Supreme Court judge, but the point I was making was simply to warn the Government that this is a movement that is happening internationally, and we cannot be impervious to those views that are being expressed, because they will matter to New Zealand as well.

The Government has said there is no core function of the State; it has said there is no such thing. There is nowhere that it would draw the line; anything is up for privatisation or competitive management. We were told by the Minister of Corrections that the only question we need to ask is “What works?”. That is the only question. Anything goes, but it has to work. I make no apology for holding the views that I do, but it would be a mistake for anyone in this House to argue that they conflict with the mantra “What works?”. I am actually a great believer in what works. It has been the driver behind the Opposition’s offer to the Government to work collaboratively on early intervention so that we can reduce our prison population.

I was invited to a meeting with the Minister of Justice and the Minister of Māori Affairs on early intervention, and I was really impressed with the quality of that meeting. I went back to the Labour caucus and told it that we had to offer up something, that we had to work with the Government on that issue. Early intervention is where, we all agree, the most good can be done, if we are genuinely to do something about our prison population. What has the Government’s response been to that general offer? Nothing. We are still waiting. I have had a letter asking that we work together on Sale of Liquor Act issues, knowing full well that it is a conscience issue, but there we go. A genuine offer was put on the table to work with the Government collaboratively on something that really would work.

The Prime Minister of New Zealand has hired a scientist to sit at his right hand to guide the Government on an evidence-based pathway. Yet the approach that the Government is adopting here is not evidence-based at all. I really support the hiring of a scientist to sit at the right-hand side of the Government’s highest decision-maker; I just think it is really important that he is listened to. He is saying that an evidence-based pathway is the way forward. We have heard the Government tout the UK system, when the league table shows that 10 of the 11 private prisons in the UK fit within the bottom 25 percent of all the prisons in the UK. The facts speak for themselves. This is not a seriously good argument that National members are proposing.

The ACT Party blew the cobwebs off arguments that I thought had been buried in the crypt alongside its founding member, but even he could not help himself. He had to get to his feet to argue that competition and profit were the only way that we could get value for money, the only way we could get results. Competition is great for consumers. It is fantastic for consumers. As a former Minister of Commerce I am well aware of the anti-competitive measures that many in the private sector take, particularly in order to take public sector contracts and milk them for all they are worth, as we have seen in the newspapers in the last few days. They want the benefits to accrue to themselves, because they are profit-making businesses and they would rather not see the benefit go to the consumers. That is what competition was designed to preserve—benefit for the consumers.

It is a question of whether the profit motive is the driver we want in a service that benefits from keeping its business full of people. It is absolutely counter-intuitive that we would want the profit motive driving our prison service, of all things. That has been the problem overseas. The incentives have been utterly and completely perverse: keeping people in for longer, punishing them for minor infractions while they are in jail, keeping them there for longer and longer, ensuring that the prisons have their fodder, that the prisoners keep coming back because of the revolving-door syndrome. Private prisons need to keep seeing them return, because that is where the profit lies.

I do not feel that way about the not-for-profit sector. There is an enormous difference, and I disagree entirely with the Minister of Maori Affairs on this issue. I see the real role for the so-called non-public in the not-for-profit sector, where a lot of Māori organisations work, where a lot of Pasifika agencies work, and where agencies like the Salisbury Street Foundation have made a huge difference in terms of really turning round the lives of people and ensuring that habilitation and rehabilitation take place. I think this is where the Māori Party tragically was sold a pup by National. It offered it a slice of the action, when, in fact, Māori could have a much more important role in reducing the prison population and reducing reoffending rates. The Salisbury Street Foundation, as I have mentioned, stands testament to the value that the not-for-profit sector adds to the justice system.

This bill is not about that. It is actually about carving off a profit centre in the shape of people who have offended against the laws of the State, and allowing not only the cost of their incarceration to be passed on to the taxpayer but the provision of profit to the private sector to be passed on to the taxpayer, as well. That is what I object to. The Minister did not once answer the question on cost. We know that the private prison experiment that we had in this country once before was more costly than the public sector alternative. It was more costly, and there is no question about that. Overseas, the costs have been higher, the rates of suicide have been higher, the rates of escape have been higher, and the damage done to prison guards has been higher. The price we pay those prison guards has been lower, and the price the taxpayer pays has been higher. This bill is on a hiding to nothing. It is not something that we stand for, and the Labour Party will be opposing it vigorously.

I am delighted to be speaking on the third reading of the Corrections (Contract Management of Prisons) Amendment Bill. That is exactly what the bill is about: contracting out just the management of prisons. It is about innovation, new ideas, and great leadership that provides great outcomes. That is the sort of leadership that National is providing and that is the sort of leadership that we are getting under a new Minister of Corrections, who is actually making a difference in corrections, which is long overdue.

I commend my Law and Order Committee colleagues, the select committee staff, and also the officials, who did an outstanding job in meeting the many demands placed upon them during the progress of the bill. I am delighted that we are supporting this bill, that it is coming to the end of its duration in Parliament, and that it will very soon be an Act.

We have listened now to two National Party speakers, and we are still waiting to hear cogent reasons for the contracting out of prison management, and for the purpose of the Corrections (Contract Management of Prisons) Amendment Bill. We heard the previous speaker, Sandra Goudie, say this bill is about innovation. Well, where is the innovation? One of the items that was raised by the Minister of Corrections, in the Committee stage, concerned an initiative to bring Māori issues within the prison. But that was not brought in by private prisons; that was brought in by a public sector prison in Hawke’s Bay. That was where the initiative started. It was not a private sector initiative, at all. The Minister learnt a second thing when she got advice from her own Department of Corrections about going to Australia to look at private prisons. The department said there was nothing good, nothing new, or nothing worthwhile there when looking at this issue.

The previous speaker also said we had seen innovations by this National Government, and I say that is probably closer to the truth than anything else. The National Government came to power with a sort of pragmatic view, and said to New Zealanders that everything they had been given under the previous administration they would get from National, plus more. People were told they would also get tax cuts and all sorts of other wonderful things. In fact, piece by piece, we are seeing the true face of National. It is a classic right-wing agenda. The right believes in minimum Government. It believes in tax cuts. We have seen tax cuts under the National Government, but people who do not earn over $40,000 a year did not receive anything. The tax cuts that the Government brought in saw over a third of them go to the top 3 percent of income earners.

💬 Hon Tau Henare: That’s worn-out scaremongering.

It might be worn out, but the Hon Tau Henare knows that it is absolutely true. The other aspect of the right-wing agenda is deregulation, and we have seen that happen in amendments to the Resource Management Act. Another aspect of that agenda is contracting out. These are ideological positions, whether or not they make good sense.

The point about this decision is that if it is not ideological and there is evidence for it, then let us examine the evidence. I say to the House and to the National Government that there is no evidence to suggest that privately managed prisons are better, safer, cheaper, or more innovative than State-run prisons. There is no evidence of that, whatsoever. In fact, the evidence is entirely in the other direction. In the absence of any concrete evidence we are able to conclude, without doubt, that this decision is driven purely by ideology. It is part of National’s programme of privatisation over time. National has said it is not going to privatise some things in this term of Parliament, but it has not said to the public that it is not going to privatise, at all.

In fact, when we look around the world, and we look at the advice from the United States, we find there is a terrible legacy from privately run prisons. The list goes on and on. A country that is much closer than the United States to New Zealand in its structure, its history, and its background is Canada. Just 3 years ago Canada ended the privatisation experiment and returned all of its prisons to the public sector, saying after 5 years the Government could find no appreciable benefit from privatisation. Canada is very similar to New Zealand, and after 5 years it could find no appreciable benefit of privatisation. That is the Canadian experience. The United Kingdom, another country with which we share a lot of similarities, had a similar experience. The report of the National Audit Office of 2003, some 6 years ago, stated that the performance of the prisons was mixed, but it said almost all of the bottom-ranked prisons were privately managed. It stated that the worst-performing prisons in the United Kingdom were in the private sector. That is the evidence. Canada and Britain have shown that the privately run prisons were amongst the worst-performing prisons.

In New Zealand we have our own experience of privately run prisons. What did we have with the Auckland Central Remand Prison? Well, the first thing we have been told by the Government is that private prisons are more efficient. But being “more efficient” would mean that they are more cost-effective. Well, the facts from the Minister’s own department show that the Auckland Central Remand Prison was more expensive than the public prisons. On every measure it was more expensive. So we will have higher costs to the taxpayer. The Minister said privately run prisons would do better with rehabilitation. Well, if the basic costs are higher, then obviously rehabilitation costs will be on top of that. And we all know there will have to be a profit on top of that, again.

But there is worse to come. The Law and Order Committee heard directly from people who were employed in the Auckland Central Remand Prison—they were staff who turned up to the hearings—who said that by talking to the select committee they had put their future employment at risk. This was evidence that they knew could put their future employment at risk. They were people—

💬 David Bennett: Rubbish!

The member says “Rubbish!”, but that is what they said. Everybody agreed that this was the case, and that going on record was putting their future employment at risk. There was no doubt about that. Despite the fact that they were putting their future employment at risk, they made it very clear to the committee that statistics within the privately run prison were massaged. They did not want to get bad statistics, and they were encouraged by their management not to have them because that would put the contract at risk.

And here comes the rub: if we have a privately managed prison and the determination that it will be privately managed is by the say-so of the Chief Executive of the Department of Corrections, then the chief executive has a vested interest in ensuring that the statistics for the prison are good. The management of that prison has a vested interest in ensuring the statistics for that prison are good. What the Government is happy for us to rely on is the belief that the accounting systems run by the privately run prison and the accounting systems run by the chief executive are correct and will tell us with absolutely deathly accurately what went on in that prison. Well, I say that is not good enough. I say that is not good enough, because they both have a vested interest in ensuring that the outcomes look good on paper.

A lot of people put a great worth and store on auditors. I happen to be someone who thinks that audits have a limited use. People want to think audits are great should look at two fabulous world companies: WorldCom and Enron, both of which had fantastic audit reports. Those companies sucked in billions of dollars into them, only to crash overnight and disappear, with not a scrap left. They both had fantastic audits. One of their auditors was Arthur Andersen, a company that did extensive business here in New Zealand, but which disappeared completely. Let us be clear that audits are no guarantee whatsoever that things are right, particularly when the auditors are chosen by the organisations themselves.

Now Parliament has its own auditor, the Auditor-General, because over time Parliament understood that departments that chose their own auditors gave Parliament figures that it could not entirely rely upon. So Parliament made the decision to get its own auditor: the Office of the Controller and Auditor-General. This House has asked for, and been denied by the National Government, the right of the Office of the Controller and Auditor-General to have complete and unfettered access to all of the information on this issue. Well, we have been turned down by the Government. I ask the Government members what they have to hide.

The Minister of Corrections says the Office of the Controller and Auditor-General will have full access to all the information. Well, yes, it will have; it will have sheets of paper, and information supplied by the contractor and by the department. She says the Office of the Controller and Auditor-General will have access to the department’s staff. Yes, it will have, but that does not mean that the Office of the Controller and Auditor-General will have access to the staff of the privately run prison. It will not necessarily have that, because those staff will be employees of a private company. The Office of the Controller and Auditor-General does not have automatic right of access to the employees of a private company. Labour wanted to change the law so that the Office of the Auditor-General would have direct access to those employees, just as it has access to the staff of every Government department in New Zealand. If it wants to go through and audit, for example, Work and Income, the Ministry of Social Development, or Treasury, not only can it look at the figures and interrogate the books but it can talk to the staff and get a feel for what is happening on the ground. The Government’s decision not to give the Office of the Controller and Auditor-General direct contact with the staff, I think, puts a veil between that office—Parliament’s auditor—and the contract prison.

This brings me back to the point made by the Hon Lianne Dalziel. Parliament passes laws to give judges the power to incarcerate people and to deprive them of their liberty. The incarceration of those people is handled by the executive arm of Government via the department. If we as parliamentarians want to ensure that the powers that we have delegated to judges and to the Department of Corrections are handled correctly, then the Office of the Controller and Auditor-General must have unfettered right of access to these institutions, but the Government has denied Parliament that right. I think the Government is wrong. The Government has decided to push this legislation through for ideological reasons.

The Greens spoke very strongly in opposition to the Corrections (Contract Management of Prisons) Amendment Bill when it was first introduced. Our opposition to it has become, if anything, more adamant as we have observed and analysed the information the debate has revealed to date.

We have heard much about innovation; the word has popped up regularly in a number of speeches. Indeed, the commentary on the bill includes the statement: “Opening up prison management to contractors provides an opportunity for innovation and change in the way in which prisons in New Zealand are operated.” The word “innovation” caught my eye. We most often associate that word with ideas that are new and, generally, positive. It is often associated with some idea or proposal that is forward-thinking or even visionary. Sadly, this bill reflects a mind-set that is as far from being truly innovative or visionary as one could reasonably imagine.

There is most certainly an urgent need for change in our whole approach to prisons and imprisonment. Successive Governments have tried and, it must be said, failed to find solutions. The failure of those efforts is indicated by the reality that, as a country, we continue to have one of the highest rates of imprisonment per capita in the world, and that rate continues to grow. The very dated mind-set behind this bill reflects the assumption that did so much harm in the 1980s and the 1990s, which is that public sector delivery of services is wasteful and ineffective and that private provision is more effective, more efficient, and generally cheaper. The privatisation of the Public Service during that time left a very costly legacy that has still not been repaired, and hard evidence for this case is simply not there, as we have heard a lot tonight.

Comments made earlier today to the Law and Order Committee painted a very graphic picture of a Department of Corrections that is under enormous stress, and, indeed, stretched almost to breaking point. Despite spending millions of dollars each year locking up offenders, our rate of recidivism remains untenably high, with a strong correlation between rates of imprisonment and reoffending. The annual report of the Department of Corrections informed us that the number of serious assaults on one prisoner by another has risen by some 45 percent in the year 2008-09, compared with the previous year, and that serious assaults on staff have risen by something close to 80 percent in the same time period. The introduction of this bill adds to the enormous stress that already exists within corrections, and, not least, to the stress felt by prison officers.

One thing on which I think we can all agree is that our prison system is broken. But passing the responsibility for the management of prisons to private contractors is not the mechanism that can or will fix it. A number of speakers have reflected on the fact that one of the most potent powers that may be exercised by the State in a liberal democracy is the power to deprive an individual of his or her liberty, and freedom of movement and association. This power should be exercised exclusively by the State, with a direct line of accountability to the public. Introducing private enterprise management for profit of people incarcerated makes no more sense than would the private provision of other elements of the justice system—the courts or the police—or, indeed, of the defence forces.

The idea of private prisons might be marginally more palatable if there could be some reasonable expectation of economic or social benefit arising from such a radical departure from historical and, indeed, contemporary norms. Again, the evidence is simply not there. The Corrections Association of New Zealand, which represents something like 3,000 prison guards, made the following comment in its submission to the bill: “Contracting prison operation will only be cheaper if the terms and conditions of employment for employees are reduced. This will lead to considerable difficulties with recruitment and retention of staff. This will expose the Corrections Officers and the prisoners to considerable risk. Potentially these risks will fall back on the Department.” The association made the point that “small rural communities will be disadvantaged by less attractive terms and conditions and the provision of profits to what are likely to be overseas based contractors.” The association went on and expressed the very well-informed view that the bill, if passed, would inevitably lead to more dangerous prisons for staff and inmates alike. It voiced the very real concern that it is very inappropriate for anyone but an officer of the State to exercise extensive powers over prisoners, including the use of force in certain situations and the right of search and seizure.

There is a very legitimate role for the private sector generally to open up new markets, expand business, and generate profit, and having recently come from the business sector, I am very supportive of those activities. In this instance, however, the success of the business model of a private prison would be assured if more people were locked up for longer. So where is the incentive for a private operator to reduce inmate numbers, to reduce recidivism, and to pursue rehabilitation and the much more complex goals of a functioning corrections service?

It is all too well known that Māori are disproportionately represented in prison musters. My colleague Metiria Turei, in her first reading speech on this bill, pointed to the 2007 report entitled Over-representation of Māori in the criminal justice system, in which analysing the data from apprehension through to prosecution, conviction, and, finally, sentencing confirmed that Māori are much more likely to be apprehended and more severely punished than non-Māori. The Māori focus units in prisons have begun to gain some traction. There have been some positive outcomes from that initiative. This bill, however, offers no mechanisms to improve the sorry state of the statistics for Māori. Grossly disproportionate numbers of young Māori are in jail, but the bill does nothing to address this. There is no provision for access to kaumātua and no requirement to liaise with tangata whenua, nor is there any obligation for the monitor to report on such matters.

The prisons would operate through corporate structures that limit the liability, and that distance the parent company from that liability. This would leave joint venture partners such as iwi carrying liability. A very useful and important submission was made by Professor Jane Kelsey from the school of law at Auckland University. She made the point, already made tonight, that the Auckland Central Remand Prison experience of privatisation delivered distorted figures and outcomes, to the extent that it was a loss-leader for the Corrections Corporation of Australia to gain a foothold in the New Zealand prison service. It is clear that private contracts will focus on new prisons being built. They will have no interest in taking on a Victorian pile like Mount Eden Prison. They will leave the public sector to manage the older, run-down prisons, which will make comparisons between the two sectors wholly invalid. There is a distinct disconnect where contractors have access to official information, but reports on performance indicators and monitors’ reports do not have to be released under the Official Information Act, because of commercial confidentiality. Too much of what could occur in a private prison could be concealed under that guise.

We know that the global recession means that it is harder for private prison companies, like others, to get finance, and there are intense pressures to maximise short-term profit. If profits fail to meet expectations, then there is pressure to renegotiate with the State, which may have to carry the risk of private failure. What would be the Government’s position if a privately operated prison appeared to be getting into serious financial trouble? Could the State step aside and allow it to go broke? It is much more likely—in fact, inevitable—that the public purse would once again be called upon to bail out private enterprise that has failed.

We know that private prisons cut costs by reducing labour costs—as labour costs typically represent about 80 percent of overall running costs—through lower staffing levels and more electronic surveillance. Effectively our prisons would become electronic zoos, with brutalising, dehumanising effects on the inmates. The likelihood of their returning to those unfortunate places would be much increased.

I think one thing we can all share is a common aspiration to—

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): I am sorry to interrupt the member but his time has expired.

I am very pleased to rise in support of the Corrections (Contract Management of Prisons) Amendment Bill. The main reason I am so pleased is that we support anything that will benefit the justice system. I have listened very carefully to the debate, both here in the House and on television, and I have to say that I have heard nothing credible from members on the other side of the House or to my immediate right that would suggest that private prisons will not be an improvement.

Data from the UK shows that privately run prisons are cheaper and, more important, that they deliver better outcomes. Closer to home there is plenty of evidence—it has almost become boring repeating it—from the time when Auckland Central Remand Prison was under private management to suggest that there are plenty of positives in such a system. Labour, in its 9 years in power, showed a great aversion to the private sector, bordering on the paranoid. Its decision to re-annex Auckland Central Remand Prison was based not on results, which were very encouraging, but rather on its own ideology. I applaud Mr Hipkins for finally admitting that his stance at least was based on ideology.

The decision to re-annex the Auckland Central Remand Prison cost $3 million in transition costs, but the social cost was even bigger. The Auckland Central Remand Prison was run in a formal partnership with Iwi Whānui o Tāmaki-makau-rau, an advisory board representing six northern iwi. For the first time, Māori were directly involved with the operation and management of the prison system, or at least a part of it. We have heard ad infinitum today and tonight that over half of New Zealand’s prisoners are Māori. That is from a population of about 16 percent of New Zealanders. Many in Māoridom wanted, and still want, to take ownership of that problem and resolve it. Old, intractable problems require new solutions.

I applaud the Māori Party for having the courage to put up with the insults from members opposite for its decision to support a new direction. As I said during the second reading debate—and it has almost become a cliché—on all measures, including suicides, assaults on guards and prisoners, and escapes, Auckland Central Remand Prison fared much better when it was privately run. Those are not my words; they are those of the former Green MP Mr Nandor Tanczos. Yet he, along with the Greens and Labour, opposed it anyway.

Let me be clear on this: Labour and the Greens opposed fewer suicides. They opposed fewer assaults, they opposed fewer prison escapes—

💬 Hon Trevor Mallard: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I find the words that the member used about me just then offensive. I have never, nor has any member here, opposed fewer suicides, which is what he just said.

💬 Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: I thank the member. I accept that point of order. Making comments like that can bring the House into disorder. I ask the member to withdraw that comment and apologise.

I withdraw and apologise. Since the last election and since this Parliament began, the Greens have opposed every single initiative by this Government to get tough on crime and the causes of crime. Private prisons will be a reality by the end of this evening. For the record, I ask the Greens again whether, in 2 years’ time, if the results in terms of recidivism or any other measure are 25 percent better than they are today, they will still oppose private prisons.

💬 Kevin Hague: Are you seeking leave for another call for us?

Oh no, no. There was no answer; just a bit of smartness. That is to be expected. If one is a member of the Labour Party or the Greens, blind ideology, and looking after one’s union backers in Labour’s case, is more important than results. It is more important even than people’s lives.

Privatisation is not a right-wing conspiracy. Around the world it has become the norm. The World Bank noted recently: “Privatization is now so widespread that it is hard to find countries not using the approach. North Korea, Cuba and, perhaps, Myanmar make up the shrunken universe of the resistant.” We can add the members opposite and the Corrections Association of New Zealand to that list. They think that the sky will fall in if the Government delegates to those who can do a better job.

It has been very interesting to hear in numerous speeches from members tonight—dozens, I think it would be fair to say—that they see it as an article of faith that the operation of prisons is and must be a function of the State. But no one has actually said where that comes from. I ask which volume of Marx that comes from. Where does it come from? No one has explained to me or to this House why that is an axiom. The simple answer is that it is not. There is no tablet in stone, and there is nothing written by, and handed down from, the gods that says that the incarceration of prisoners convicted by the courts must be a function of the State. We heard Mr Barker, I think, talk about the army as another example of something that must be administered by the State. But the new member Mr Shearer is on record as saying that mercenary armies are in fact a good idea. So I wonder just where those members get that axiom from.

I suppose that in 6 or 9 years’ time, if Labour manages to get into power, we will not have Kiwibank and KiwiRail in the election of 2021; we will have “KiwiJail” as a campaign by members opposite. They are suffering from a phobia, and they need help. I have heard no good reasons from members on the other side to change my mind.

Since being here I have visited Rimutaka Prison, and Pāremoremo prison, which is now known as Auckland Prison. The staff there, in my observation, are doing their best. They are professionals; most of them would have nothing to fear if prisons were privately run. If people like Mr Hanlon and his union mates continue spouting the kind of allegations they made in the Law and Order Committee, they would indeed have plenty to worry about. I will give members on the other side another lesson in law. Unsubstantiated allegations made with the protection of Parliament are not, in fact, evidence. I do not think that any lawyers are left over on that side of the Chamber; they have all gone home. But that is the case—

💬 Chris Hipkins: I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. As you will be aware, the member cannot make reference to the absence of other members from the Chamber.

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): It was a generic point, and this is just an interruption to the debate. The point the member makes is well made, but the member speaking was not referring to individual members.

This bill will shake things up, and that is not before time. I think that probably the one thing that everyone across the Chamber can agree on is that the present system is not working. It is not working for white people, and it certainly is not working for Māori. The Māori Party has expressed a strong interest in helping to revive the iwi - private sector partnership once again, and again I applaud its courage for doing that. I hope it works; I really do. This Government, unlike the previous one, will focus on what works.

The amusing irony for me is that our party, according to members on the other side, is supposed to be all about ideology. But in this case, we are at one with National and the Māori Party in pursuing what works. I say again, in conclusion, that no one would try to argue that what we have now—75 or 80 percent recidivism after 5 years—is working, so this measure has to be an improvement. Thank you.

I will take just a short call in the third reading of the Corrections (Contract Management of Prisons) Amendment Bill; I want to clear up a couple of issues from my earlier speech. Many of us have spoken about innovation, and the possibility of privatisation allowing for innovation. I made this point before. Mr Barker has spoken about the Māori focus units starting in Mangaroa Prison in Hastings. As I said earlier, I had a role in that. In fact, Peter Grant and I ended up in there, making the final decisions about the form of that prison. It actually turned out to be not how we wanted it, because the restrictions in being tied to the mainstream prison did not allow it to be free, or to operate freely with its own rules, custom, and culture inside it. For example, inmates were placed in the unit without even wanting to be there, but just to fill it up because the main part of the prison was short of beds. Others were taken out of that focus unit after they had reformed and were put back into mainstream, which was devastating for them in terms of what they had learnt and where they were travelling. The other one was case management. The whole idea of the focus unit was to put each inmate on a case management programme so that he could have an end goal, leave with whānau out there to look after him, and not return. Also, the transfers that happened between prisons affected the unit. At the end of the day the recidivism rate was down only 7 percent; that drop should have been much more.

That is why we are building this new Whare Oranga Ake. This is a State arm of the system, but could quite clearly be a private prison, as well. Māori who are talking about possibly taking over the contract of a full prison cannot do so at the moment under the State, but they might be able to do it if privatisation was allowed. I have no problem with Māori doing that, because at the moment things are getting worse. Over 50 percent of our prison population are Māori, so why not give Māori a chance to see whether they can actually do a better job of reforming those in prison, just as we are looking for them to do so in education and other areas? In health Whānau Ora is now coming up, with Māori working amongst our own people. I think it is really good because nothing will change unless the Māori people themselves feel like someone is leading them and there is an opportunity for them to actually get out of the situation that they are in.

It is all about positiveness, and that is why I believe privatisation will bring innovation. One example arose when I went to Fulham Correctional Centre in Australia. I did not know that it had an Aboriginal group and a Māori group who did a welcome for us—a kind of pōwhiri. We learnt afterwards that those two groups were at war with each other in that prison. There was conflict between the Aboriginal group and the Māori group, and the prison tried that welcome to bring them together. At the end of the pōwhiri, they were shaking hands and giving hugs. I checked up and they have quite a bond going now. They were able to do that; the private situation that I am talking about allows innovation. I have noticed flexibility with Māori in Dom Karauria’s prison here in Auckland City. He allowed different elders to come in and do things, whereas in some prisons we have taken elders in they have had to go through the machine, which is quite humiliating because they are the crème de la crème of Māori society. They have been stopped in the middle of a speech, not allowed to have the food that consummates the occasion, and things like that, whereas in Dom’s prison he was able to say to the whole prison that tea would be late that day because of such and such. So they have that kind of flexibility.

New Zealand prisons are so interrelated that what happens in one carries over into another, and so on. In prisons any little change of practice can cause a riot. For example, one day prisoners may be able to have beards and then the next day they are not allowed beards, and there is trouble; it is really important that the prisoners know where they are at. I believe that the flexibility allowed in private prisons is worth a go, and also that the opportunity for Māori to get in there and have a go at running them themselves is also worth trying. Thank you.

I very much appreciated the sentiments of the Hon Dr Pita Sharples in his speech. I believe his speech highlighted one of the great advantages that the private management of prisons enables, in terms of development and true, great results.

I want to talk about the decency agenda that one of the previous speakers from Labour asked me to speak more on. I read a quote from a Labour MP who spoke during the parliamentary debate on offender management in the UK. I will quote the UK director of prisons from Her Majesty’s Prison Service, Phil Wheatley. He was asked: “What does decency in prisons mean to you?”. Phil Wheatley replied: “Fair and consistent treatment of prisoners—doing time is hard and it is not our job to make it any harder. Prisoners have to rely on staff intervention and cooperation so it is vital they are never unfairly treated or refused what they are entitled. Telling a prisoner you can’t help because you’re busy, when actually you’re talking to your colleague about your holiday plans, is not decent behaviour. Human treatment and delivering promised standards for providing prisoners with a reasonable quality of life are also part of the decency agenda, as is treating prisoners within the law—no one should be punished outside the rules. Finally it means getting the basics right—providing clean, properly equipped and maintained facilities and protecting prisoners from others and themselves.”

He was asked further: “How has the decency agenda helped with suicide prevention, which still remains high on the agenda?”. He said: “The Service has been doing a lot of work with Cambridge University and research has shown that if prisoners—many with mental health problems, serious drug problems and many facing the possibility of long sentences—arrive at a good, safe, orderly prison with good regimes and good staff prisoner relationships, it can reduce the distress experienced by prisoners, which can lead to suicide or self-harm.” Finally he said: “There is a lot of work to be done but we are well placed to implement improvements.” He is acknowledging that there is room for improvement.

I come back to the quote from Gerry Sutcliffe. He said that the first private prison opened in 1992, and there are now 11 such prisons operating in England and Wales, holding about 10 percent of the prison population. The companies that provide those services have developed a strong track record of delivery and are driving forward the decency agenda, as well as introducing innovation and increasing value for money in public sector prisons. So we see a combination of private and public working together to improve conditions for prisoners, as well as introducing innovation, which increases value for money in the public sector prisons—exactly what the Hon Pita Sharples was talking about.

I have visited a number of prisons, and every week a number of years ago I visited inmates in Block B of Pāremoremo prison, which is now Auckland prison. I have seen the quality of care that New Zealand prison staff offer. I was privileged last Friday to give awards to our prison staff in New Plymouth. They are doing a good job. This bill is about creating opportunity for private management to work together with the public to bring innovation and improvement in our prison service. I believe that this bill has great quality in it, and has enabled us to move forward. I commend this bill to the House. Thank you.

I need to point out a few ironies before I get started on the main part of my speech. The first irony that I really have to point out goes back to what the Associate Minister of Corrections, Dr Pita Sharples, was saying earlier, with regard to some of his aspirations for Māori. I have to ask Dr Pita Sharples how those aspirations can possibly occur under the watch of the Minister of Corrections, Judith Collins, who in the past could not respect even the simple protocols that went with a simple pōwhiri. How, therefore, can she share in the aspirations that he has for Māori with regard to rehabilitation? She could not sit in a pōwhiri because she was told she needed to sit in the second row, yet she has now had some sort of renaissance in her thinking and she can now share the aspirations that Dr Pita Sharples has for Māoridom? I find that very, very difficult to believe. At some stage, the fact that she truly does not share those aspirations will become uncovered, and at that point in time it will be an ugly, ugly sight.

The second irony I have to mention is in regard to something that was raised in the debate on this bill. The irony is that at an earlier time Mr Young, a member opposite, discussed the fact that when Labour was in Government it had incarcerated such a high number of people. The argument prior to that was that Labour was not tough enough, and it had not incarcerated enough people, yet that member said in this Chamber that we incarcerated too many. We have heard on numerous occasions across this debate that the levels of incarceration have increased.

💬 Jonathan Young: I never said that.

I ask that Mr Young checks the Hansard for this debate; he will find that he did say that.

The third irony—for there are so many—is in relation to the next bill we will be discussing, which is the Corrections (Use of Court Cells) Amendment Bill. The Government is saying that private prisons will solve all problems, have better rehabilitation, make safer prisons, and be less costly for New Zealand taxpayers, yet the next bill we will be dealing with, the Corrections (Use of Court Cells) Amendment Bill, is basically legislating in anticipation of overcrowding in prisons. The Government is anticipating that prisons will not be able to cope with the sheer numbers who will be incarcerated, therefore it needs to legislate with regard to the use of court cells for the overflow in numbers. I have to point out that there is an irony in that, and it is something we cannot help but look at and think “Well, what are they going on about?”.

The fourth irony I wish to discuss before I get on to my main points is the irony that comes with some of the things the chief executive has said. How can we think that this legislation is a good idea when the chief executive of the Department of Corrections wrote to his workers, in an email dated 8 June 2009, and said that at a time when the Government was struggling to cope with a global economic crisis and finances were tight, his budget therefore did not allow extra money for wage increases. He then stressed the importance of an agreement on reasonable terms: “Failing this, I will have no alternative but to recommend to the Government other approaches which will include the option of private management of some established prisons.” That sounds like a man who fundamentally does not support private prisons because they are better or safer; in fact, by his making a threat like that in relation to private prisons, he is reinforcing the fact that it is widely felt amongst corrections staff, including himself, that they are an undesirable option. Those are the things I wanted to point out before I got on to the main part of my speech.

Labour members do not support the Corrections (Contract Management of Prisons) Amendment Bill. Labour members are of the view that the incarceration of citizens is a core Crown responsibility and, as such, should be under the direct control of the Crown through the Department of Corrections.

💬 David Garrett: Where does that come from?

If Mr Garrett would listen, I will tell him. Public prisons are morally and fiscally accountable to taxpayers, whereas private prisons are accountable to their shareholders, with a binding obligation to maximise profit. There is a risk that the pressure for a private company to show profit may lead to compromised service quality such as lower staff to inmate ratios, fewer rehabilitative services, a reduced range of services, cuts in staff pay and conditions, cuts in staff quality, or all of the above. Those were things that were discussed by the corrections union, and also by the prison officers who had worked in both the State-run prison and the privately run prison when Auckland Central Remand Prison was under private management.

There is also the potential for abuse. When a profit-making company has the authority to restrict basic civil liberties, profit motives may supersede the safety of the public, staff, and inmates. We have heard of a number of examples of that happening in private prisons in Australia, America, and the UK, and we have also heard about some of the things that went on when the Auckland Central Remand Prison was under private management, with regard to reporting and the fact that things were hidden to ensure that the management could still make the profit it was trying to get out of our Government at the time.

We are also concerned that the passage of this bill will weaken the ability of members of Parliament, the media, and the general public to hold the private contractor to account in respect of corrections outcomes. At the present time members of Parliament can directly question the department, and hold it accountable through the use of select committee inquiries, the Official Information Act, and the use of parliamentary written and oral questions. These avenues are not available in respect of a private company. The Auditor-General at present has unfettered access to Government departments and agencies, and can inquire into any matter he or she feels is appropriate. It is our belief that under this legislation the Auditor-General’s power and ability to inquire directly into matters pertaining to the private sector contractor will be limited. The Office of the Controller and Auditor-General reported to the Law and Order Committee that under this bill it would not have the power to audit a private company and provide an opinion on the performance of that company.

The lack of independence of the people employed to monitor privately managed prisons is also a concern. Those prison monitors will be employees of the Department of Corrections rather than have an independent status. We also note with concern that there is no compulsory provision to require 24 hour, 7-day-a-week monitoring, and the Labour members on the select committee expressed the concern that while there would be someone there from 9 to 5, who would be there to monitor what went on for the remainder of the day?

We do not believe that a good explanation has been given for why there is a need for private management of prisons. In relation to costs and efficiency, there is no evidence to suggest that the privatisation of prisons would be more cost-effective and efficient than the current Department of Corrections model.

Finally, we Labour members had serious concerns about the Government members using their majority on the select committee during the select committee process to block our access to Ministry of Justice officials. The ministry had input into the departmental report, and we believed that the committee would have benefited from hearing the views and the insights of the ministry. We questioned the motive for not allowing the committee access to those officials, and we were disappointed that this opportunity was denied when we were considering such a significant shift in our justice system. And, more important, constitutional issues are involved. The Government members used their majority vote to block Opposition members from making legitimate inquiries of a Government ministry that had specialist knowledge of the matters being considered. Just as members have a right to free speech, we believe that members, as select committee members, must have the right of access to officials and information. We oppose this bill.

It is a pleasure to rise to speak to the third reading of the Corrections (Contract Management of Prisons) Amendment Bill. Before I get going on that, I point out that it is ironic that the speaker who has just resumed her seat, Carmel Sepuloni, complained about constitutional rights; she was outnumbered on the select committee, so she was voted down. I take this opportunity to apologise to the officials. The member who just spoke, basically, insulted the officials, who actually helped us tremendously. I would like to thank them for their time and their tremendous help.

I take a little moment to quote my taxi driver who dropped me off at the airport very early on Tuesday morning. When I told her that we would be debating this bill she said “It’s about”—I do not think I am allowed to say the next word—“[bleep] time.” I have to agree with her sentiments.

Apart from the obvious ideologically driven objections from members opposite, one of the main concerns raised during the deliberations of the Law and Order Committee was the issue of whether the privately managed prisons will be as accountable as the publicly managed prisons. Well, the answer that we had, the advice that we had, and the discussions we had said yes. It was just that members opposite refused to listen to that. The Office of the Auditor-General can still audit the Department of Corrections. The cost and performance of the privately run prisons will still come under the jurisdiction of the department. Members of the Law and Order Committee were told that this morning by the chief executive.

I have mentioned in debate on earlier stages of this bill that we are not selling the corrections system; we want only to look at options for the private management of our prisons. If I can quote my wise taxi driver again, we cannot do any worse than we have done before. The Department of Corrections has had a terrible report card from the Audit Office. Mr Barker has referred in debate on previous stages of the bill to the woeful performance of the department. This bill provides an alternative, a choice in how we manage our prison population. Members opposite may not like choice, but to members on this side of the House choice is essential. It is wonderful. New ideas are being injected into a public entity that lacks innovation not only in management but also in inmate rehabilitation. It can only be a good thing to provide better options for all concerned. Prisoners will, hopefully, have a better rehabilitation rate, prison management will have better outcomes, and the public will feel safer for it.

One of the reasons why I feel quite strongly that that will happen with this bill is that it sets standards in all aspects, including care of prisoners, performance standards, training for staff, etc. These standards are to be no lower than those of the publicly run, publicly managed prisons. That means that they will definitely be better than what we already have. Standards across the board will have to be better in privately managed prisons.

In my humble opinion, we should all aspire to achieve better outcomes for all New Zealanders. I have heard many members opposite speaking passionately about wanting better outcomes for prisoners, but if we simply continue on the same path in the area of corrections, we will not improve. The Department of Corrections has struggled to produce better outcomes for our prisoners, and the repeat offending rate is bloated. That the Opposition keeps opposing this bill is simply hypocritical, as the previous Government did not improve the lot of inmates, and the public did not feel safer for the 9 years that Labour was in Government. We need to improve, we need to innovate, and we need to change for the better. This bill will provide that opportunity for the Department of Corrections. Hence, I commend this bill to the House.

That was another speech from a National member attacking the Opposition. Those members attack the people rather than the arguments, because the arguments on our side of the House are quite defensible. But Government members can produce no evidence and no facts or figures. All they can do is to attack the people on this side of the House who are raising arguments that those members do not agree with.

Melissa Lee said that privatisation is a new idea. It is a new idea to Melissa Lee. Well, it dates back many centuries, in fact. Let us go back to the 19th century practice of prison labour leasing. I am referring to a document put forward by the Howard League for Penal Reform. It is very useful. Basically, it talks about the prison labour leasing that began in America in the 19th century. For a state fee, prisoners were housed, clothed, and fed by private contractors in return for their labour. A history of injustice, neglect, brutality, and high morbidity rates for the mainly black prison population was recorded, and by the early 20th century those leases were gradually phased out as the privately contracted work was returned to the control of the state. The idea is hardly new. It is not new. This debate goes back centuries, yet National members are saying that somehow they have had a grand new idea. Well, if winding back the clock a couple of hundred years is a grand new idea for National, I would hate to think what is coming next.

I will talk about who may end up running these private prisons, and what some of the risks involved in privatisation are, because significant risks are involved. Private prison operators are encouraged to cut costs, endanger the safety of their staff, and endanger the safety of the public. There is no incentive for them to reduce recidivism. I will talk particularly about the GEO Group. For example, my colleague Carmel Sepuloni raised earlier in the debate a case where the GEO Group placed a woman in a cell block with male inmates, who raped her and beat her, and she later took her own life. State authorities removed 125 inmates from a prison run by GEO Group—the people whom National wants to run New Zealand’s prisons—because of inadequate staff training and inadequate health care. Those running the prison were found to have served rotten food. They knowingly made false and misleading statements to state officials. They failed to complete criminal record checks on at least 100 prison guards. I repeat: they failed to do criminal record checks for 100 prison guards. They violated domestic and international laws on due process and humane treatment. These are the people whom the National Government holds up as the bright hope for improving our prison service. Well, with a track record like that, members on this side of the House do not want a bar of it. If that is what the Government thinks the future of our prison service in New Zealand is, I think that is disgraceful.

This is the wrong debate for us to be having in this House. I have sat here all night since we began this debate, and not once have I heard anybody from any party on the other side of the House talk about anything that would reduce the number of people who end up in prison in the first place. Surely, with New Zealand having the second-highest incarceration rate in the developed world, that is something that the Government would want to talk about. Rather than talking about how it can make a profit from locking up more and more people, perhaps it should talk about how to reduce the number of people who end up in prison in the first place. We have had nothing, not a jot, from the ACT Party or National on any of that.

Fundamentally, this matter is an ideological debate for those members. It is all about how they can make a profit out of the activities of the State. National is absolutely ideologically wedded to the idea of privatisation. The ACT Party, the “Self-help Help Yourself Party”, is completely and utterly off the planet when it comes to this type of thing. If those members can make a dollar out of it, they are into it. If they can make a buck out of it, then they are absolutely into it. But there is no evidence to suggest that privatisation will work. All the evidence goes the other way. All the academic research goes the other way. That is why we have heard none of it from Government members tonight. They simply cannot find any evidence.

I am sure that one of the reasons they blocked the Law and Order Committee from having access to the Ministry of Justice officials is that those officials probably would have told the committee that there is no evidence to support what the Government wants to do. We know that the officials told the Minister of Corrections that there is no evidence to support what she was trying to do, and that the evidence suggested, in fact, that it would probably have the opposite impact to what she was hoping. The select committee was not given the opportunity to hear that evidence. Melissa Lee boldly told us that that is called having a majority. She said that having a majority means that one blocks free speech and blocks the ability to look at the evidence to consider what may or may not work. That is what is being in Government is all about for National. It is all about ignoring the evidence. It is all about doing whatever the bumper sticker slogan says and doing whatever National’s private corporate mates want it to do, without fronting up and producing a single shred of evidence that it will work.

The Labour Party’s opposition to this bill is based primarily on two grounds. The first is philosophical: we do not believe that it is the role of the private sector to incarcerate people and to take away their liberty. We believe that if that is to happen, then it is the role of the State. The second objection is simply based on the operation of this measure—how it will work. It will not work. It will not reduce recidivism. It will not save any money, because we know that private prisons are more expensive than public prisons. The one example that we have had in New Zealand of a private prison was more expensive to run than a public prison. The National Government has produced no evidence to suggest that privatisation will work. Our objection to this bill is not based simply on principle; it is based on principle, but that is not the only objection.

Debate interrupted.

Sitting suspended from 12 midnight to 9 a.m. (Thursday)