Corrections Amendment Bill

I move, That the Corrections Amendment Bill be now read a second time. The bill was introduced in October 2011, received its first reading in February 2012, and was referred to the Law and Order Committee. I would like to thank the Law and Order Committee, under the chairmanship of my colleague Jacqui Dean, from the deep south, for its consideration of the bill and for the very sensible changes that it has recommended.

To achieve the statutory purpose of the corrections system, custodial sentences and orders must be administered in a safe, secure, humane, and effective manner. Overall, the legislation governing the administration of the corrections system is working well. However, some provisions in the Corrections Act were identified as barriers to effectiveness and efficiency in the management of prisons, and the Corrections Amendment Bill was introduced to remove such barriers.

Some of the amendments in the bill will strengthen prison security, for instance, by making strip-searches more effective. Currently, corrections officers are required to carry out strip-searches according to two different procedures, depending on the circumstances of the strip-search. As the committee has agreed, this needlessly complicates practices and increases the risk of staff error. The bill provides for a single clear and effective strip-searching process. Some submitters were concerned about the nature of the strip-searching procedure that the bill proposes to generalise. Although strip-searches are by their very nature an intrusive measure, the proposed procedure actually helps to minimise the loss of dignity. By allowing for greater use of visual aids rather than close inspection, the proposed procedure is preferable for both the officer and the prisoner alike, as well as being more effective. Submitters also emphasised the need to protect prisoners from the potential for abuse associated with strip-searches. In light of these concerns, the committee has decided to retain the current requirement to obtain the prison manager’s approval before conducting a strip-search in certain situations. Although removing this requirement would have had operational benefits, I accept the committee’s view, on the basis of submissions, that it does play an important role in safeguarding the rights of prisoners.

Other amendments in this bill will assist in achieving positive outcomes from the management of prisons under contract. Managers of contract prisons are expected to carry out all aspects of prisoner management. However, their ability to do this is constrained by the fact that the Chief Executive of the Department of Corrections cannot delegate powers and functions to the organisation contracted to manage a prison, or to its staff. To enable this to occur, the bill as introduced provided the chief executive with a general ability to delegate powers and functions to the contractor or its staff, as well as providing the contractor with certain powers directly. As the committee has rightly concluded, there is no need to provide the contractor directly with powers that the chief executive can delegate at his or her discretion through the general provision. By relying only on the general provision, the chief executive will retain accountability and control over any of his or her powers that are exercised by the contractor.

The bill will also help to improve the quality of prison health services by aligning statutory responsibilities with the way that services actually operate. Current legislation places contracted part-time medical officers at the forefront in the organisation and delivery of health care to prisoners. In reality, this key role is played by full-time health-care managers who are registered nurses employed by the department. The role of health centre manager will be recognised in law, while retaining the requirement to ensure that prisoners have treatment from medical practitioners when required. The Office of the Ombudsmen believes that the delivery of health services in prisons should be the responsibility of a health agency rather than the department. The Department of Corrections has given careful consideration to this model of service delivery, but has concluded, in the light of experience in New Zealand and other jurisdictions, that a dedicated prison health service is better placed to meet prisoners’ needs. The bill recognises the importance of this service, and has the support of the New Zealand Nurses Organisation in this regard.

As a result of ongoing analysis of the issues addressed in the bill, the Department of Corrections has identified additional barriers to effectiveness and efficiency in the management of prisons. I asked the committee to consider some additional amendments, which will remove these barriers. Thankfully, the committee has included these amendments in the bill as reported back to the House. Many of these additional amendments will further improve prison security. For instance, it is an offence for prisoners to possess or use mobile phones or SIM cards, and there is provision to seize them. The department is usually able to extract information from these devices to investigate offences. However, prisoners are sometimes able to lock their SIM cards, and it is only phone companies that hold the information required to unlock them. The bill as amended will enable the Chief Executive of the Department of Corrections to obtain this information from phone companies where it is necessary for the detection of an offence.

Most permitted phone calls made from within a prison are recorded and held by the department. Another of the additional amendments would enable the department to keep these recordings for 2 years, rather than just 6 months. Having to erase recordings after 6 months unduly constrains the department’s ability to retrieve calls for use as evidence, and often impedes criminal investigations. A 2-year retention period strikes a much better balance between the privacy of those whose conversations are recorded and the need to preserve potential evidence of criminal activity.

Another of the additional amendments will give the department better flexibility in authorising suitable staff to read prisoner mail in order to ascertain whether material contained in it could prejudice public safety or the security and good order of the prison. Currently, this can be done only by approved custodial staff, who would otherwise spend that time performing their core duties. The bill will enable the prison manager to approve suitable non-custodial staff for this purpose.

Prisoners are far more likely than members of the public to suffer from poor mental health and attempt to harm themselves. In cases where there is particular concern that a prisoner may attempt self-harm or suicide, the prison manager authorises their segregation to an at-risk unit for medical oversight. Staff have an obligation to take every available precaution in every such case to ensure the prisoner does not have anything in their possession that could be used for self-harm or suicide. For that reason, the bill as reported back to the House requires prisoners subject to a segregation direction due to risk of self-harm to undergo a strip-search on admission and return to an at-risk unit.

The opportunity has also been taken to amend an anomalous requirement imposing more stringent drinking-water standards on prisons than on other suppliers of water, such as schools and hospitals.

I intend to introduce a Supplementary Order Paper to the Corrections Amendment Bill when the bill is considered by the Committee of the whole House. The primary purpose of the Supplementary Order Paper will be to remove any uncertainty about the legal status of the smoke-free prisons policy. The policy was introduced on 1 July 2011, and has had a very positive impact on staff and prisoner health and safety.

In conclusion, it is important that the legislation governing the operations of the corrections system appropriately balances the need to preserve the rights of prisoners with the need for prisons to operate in a manner that is safe and secure for both staff and prisoners. I am confident that the amendments in this bill strike this balance while satisfying their purpose of increasing efficiency and effectiveness in the operation of the corrections system. The bill will support front-line staff to ensure that the corrections system performs at its best. My thanks again to the select committee for its very considered work, and I commend this bill to the House.

When this bill, the Corrections Amendment Bill, was read a first time my colleagues and I acknowledged that it did contain, as the Minister of Corrections said, a number of provisions that would assist in the better administration of prisons. But we said at the time that we had a major problem with the legislation, and that was the fact that it permitted the delegation of public powers to private officials, and that has not changed. The Minister of Corrections knows that that is a major obstacle to allowing the Labour Party to be able to support the legislation.

I have to say that, additionally, my colleagues Kris Faafoi and the Hon Phil Goff sat on the Law and Order Committee, heard the evidence, and discussed that evidence with me and other colleagues, and a further concern has arisen around strip-searching, which I will refer to later in my remarks. And there is yet a third concern with this legislation now. The Minister foreshadowed the Supplementary Order Paper 171 that she proposes to move in respect of the smoking ban. Very properly, she consulted about that Supplementary Order Paper, but it too has problems, and I will speak to those in my concluding remarks.

I want first to deal with the Labour Party’s original main ground for opposing this bill. That is the fundamental objection that we take to involving any actor other than the State in the business of corrections. We believe in a hands-on, active Government approach to reducing reoffending, and we are concerned about the sorts of perverse incentives that introducing the private sector’s profit motive to the system will bring. We strongly oppose privatised prisons, and this bill extends the powers that can be delegated by the Chief Executive of the Department of Corrections to prison managers and staff in privately managed prisons. That is the fundamental reason why we cannot support it. We believe that prison management, involving as it does the removal of freedom from those who are incarcerated, is and must remain a core role of the State, and it is not something that should be run as a profit-oriented commercial interest. The logic of the system is all about reducing reoffending. The logic of the profit motive is all about expanding the offender pool.

If anybody needs to see the evidence for that, they can see the powerful lobbyists who have operated in California so effectively for the last 20 years, in the interests of those who have managed private prisons, and have sought to expand rather than sensibly contract the corrections system in that state. We do not want to see that phenomenon becoming the model that we follow in New Zealand. International experience simply does not support the privatisation of prisons or of other core services. It shows that the private sector does not provide a more effective or less expensive prison system. We think that the motivation for introducing the private sector to the prison system in New Zealand is purely ideological. It will not work. We have warned against it consistently and we maintain our opposition to it in the context of this bill.

One just needs to look at the experience of Serco, which has some very good staff—I acknowledge that. I visited the facility that it manages in Auckland, and it has got people who really want to do a very good job. But the entire system is built around processing inmates. It is a sausage factory. It simply cannot effectively reduce reoffending in the way that we would want to see. If you look at the controversy that has surrounded Serco’s management of Mt Eden prison and of facilities in the United Kingdom and in Australia, the logic of this argument starts to become clear. The record of Serco in its first year of operations at Mt Eden prison has been poor. It has failed to meet 17 out of 37 performance standards, requiring sanctions to be imposed on it for wrongful detention, wrongful release, and escape of inmates.

I was interested to read the other day in the Guardian that the Standing Committee on Justice and Legal Affairs Committee in the House of Commons has just produced a damning report into a similar attempt to privatise a core function of the State, and that is the court interpreting services. It has been described by the committee in the House of Commons as shambolic, and MPs have warned that it has caused trials to collapse and suspects to be remanded unnecessarily in custody. That is the consequence of introducing the private sector into functions that ought to be, by their very nature, the core role of an active State that actually understands its mission and carries out its functions effectively.

A second ground of concern, as I said, emerged during the evidence that was given at the select committee. The Minister, I think, was a little selective in her description of that evidence. This relates to the changes to the rules governing strip-searching. They are of grave concern to members on this side, and they form the second basis for our opposition to this legislation at this stage. As we heard in the previous speech, there are currently two types of strip-search procedures that can be undertaken under the law. One is for routine cases, such as when inmates have been on work parties outside the prison, and another is a more intrusive procedure where somebody in authority has reasonable cause to believe that there are items of contraband that are concealed on the inmate. In respect of the second type of procedure, there is a more intrusive search procedure permitted. It involves using lights and mirrors to magnify the genital and anal areas of the inmate. The bill proposes to make that second procedure the standard one for all strip-searches.

This was opposed in particular by the Corrections Association of New Zealand, the association of prison officers—the people who actually work at the coalface in our prisons. They say that making that more intrusive procedure the standard one will be provocative and it will put corrections officers, their members, at greater risk of assault. We do not want to see that happen. Furthermore, we think that the evidence demonstrates that making this more intrusive type of procedure simply is not necessary. There has been a dramatic improvement over the last 15 years, for example, in the reduction in drug use within the prisons. This seems to suggest that existing search measures are working well and that the more intrusive searching procedure in the case of routine strip-searches simply is not warranted. This was reinforced by a range of credible submitters, including the Office of the Ombudsmen, the New Zealand Law Society, and the Salvation Army. They drew attention to the risk of abuse of such procedures, which the Ombudsman pointed out has, regrettably, happened in the past.

The third basis on which Labour will oppose this legislation is the Supplementary Order Paper concerning smoking in prisons, which the Minister referred to briefly at the end of her speech. At the time that Judith Collins introduced the ban, members will remember that we were supportive of it. We think that it has worked well. I have been to a number of prisons and I have seen that it has a good effect on morale and discipline, although regretfully, as far as anybody can measure it, the recidivism rate for people going back to smoking once they leave prison seems to be quite high. But at the time that the ban was introduced we warned that it should be put on a better legal footing than it has been. The decision was made simply to introduce the ban administratively—to allow prison managers to make rules as to tobacco as contraband and disciplinary offences for possessing and using it, and it was asserted by the Minister at the time, in her typically cavalier fashion, that this would do. Well, she has put taxpayers at risk through her approach, just as she did with the David Bain matter and just as she has with the bungled appointment of the Director of Human Rights Proceedings.

Again we see this cavalier approach coming through. Mrs Tolley has been given the job of trying to rescue the situation, and I pay tribute to her for that, but we are not sure that this provision will actually be effective. The ban has been declared ineffective by the High Court. The Supplementary Order Paper will provide that “no proceedings may be brought against the Crown questioning the validity of any rules or regulations referred to in subsection (1).” There are major concerns about whether that is going to be effective. Because we warned about this some time ago we simply cannot—

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): I am sorry to interrupt the honourable member, his time has expired.

I rise with pleasure to speak in the second reading of the Corrections Amendment Bill. Perhaps I will cover off some of the issues raised by the previous speaker, Charles Chauvel. I think we have to just acknowledge and note that Labour is ideologically opposed to any kind of private management of the prison system. That is a given. It was a view expressed in the Law and Order Committee, and it is no surprise to us. I guess you have to ask yourself why it is so ideologically opposed. If you reflect back to when Labour was in Government in 2008 and in the previous 9 years to that, it left the corrections and criminal justice system in disarray. It was working in an environment where it was actually struggling with not only its criminal justice system but also with its corrections system. It lacked accountability. There was no focus, in particular, on victims. There was a critical shortage of prison beds. That was corrected by the Hon Judith Collins when she was Minister of Corrections and she brought in the double-bunking containers, which, actually, if you have a look at them, are a great solution. When the Law and Order Committee members were at Rimutaka Prison and we spoke to the prisoners in the containers they were happy with them. They were snug. They were warm. They felt safe.

This is a Government that has faced up to the issues that it was left with by the previous Labour Government. So I guess it is no surprise that Labour was unable to face up to the challenges that it had while it was in Government. Gangs and organised crime were on the rise. The P problem was absolutely out of control and that Government had absolutely no answer to it. In contrast, since National has been in power, public confidence in the Department of Corrections is 53 percent higher than it was when this Government took the Treasury benches. That is 53 percent higher confidence in corrections, so that is not a bad record. Positive random drug-tests were at a record low last year. They were down from 13 percent in 2008 to just 4 percent in the last financial year. Changes in this bill will make it even harder to get drugs into prison.

I want to talk about strip-searching. We know that Labour is ideologically opposed and always will be to the possibility that anybody else can run a prison other than the Department of Corrections, but the issue of strip-searching was one that our committee looked very carefully at, and the provisions in this bill standardise the procedure of strip-searching. The reasons for doing that were many, but I want to highlight just two. One of them is that a prisoner, naturally, does not look forward to the prospect of being strip-searched, whether they are returning from work, they have been to a court appearance, or they are going into a high-dependency unit. Of course they do not, and it is fair to say that corrections staff do not look forward to the procedure either. So there is a fair amount, it would be fair to say, of anxiety around the whole strip-searching procedure. The prisoner does not know the form of the strip-search at the moment. So it might be the very intrusive strip-search or it might be the less intrusive strip-search. They do not know which one it is to be. By standardising the search, that uncertainty is ramped down just a few notches, and the prisoner knows what they are going to face on their return to prison for whatever reason.

The second reason is the nature of the strip-search. Using lights and mirrors so that the corrections officer can have a look at the areas he or she needs to look at places the distance between the officer and the prisoner. There is less physical contact and proximity between them, which also serves to ramp down the tensions and anxiety for the prisoners and the corrections officers—

💬 Hon Phil Goff: That’s not what the corrections officers said. They said exactly the opposite.

—and at the same time increases the safety. Oh well, the member says “exactly the opposite”, and I beg to differ.

This bill is intended to reduce the barriers to effectiveness and efficiencies in prison. It does that. We received, as the Minister of Corrections said, some amendments set out in a draft Supplementary Order Paper, which we looked at carefully throughout the course of our examination of this bill. Those included to allow the Department of Corrections “to require a phone company to provide it with the personal unlock codes or keys to SIM cards … within legislative parameters, allowing prison managers to authorise non-custodial staff to read prisoners’ mail”. What that means is that the prison manager can appoint a staff member who has the appropriate training to read prisoners’ mail. That means that corrections staff do not have to go through that function, thus releasing them for other duties. The amendments also stated: “requiring that drinking water being made available to prisoners be of a standard reasonably equivalent to that supplied to the public;”—and, by the way, that also supports provision in the bill of making waterboarding before a urine test a punishable action—and “requiring that any prisoner being segregated because of a risk of self-harm be strip-searched on admission to an At Risk Unit;”. You would think a prisoner who is at risk of self-harm is pretty upset, and yes, they are. It is also worth noting that we were told that a prisoner can do damage to themselves with a paper clip, and have done so in the past. So it is necessary to do strip-searches at that time. The amendments further stated: “and allowing the department to keep recordings of prisoners’ phone calls for up to two years”—instead of 6 months—“before having to erase them, except in some defined circumstances.”, and that just aids the efficient running of our prison system. This was a good consideration of this bill in the second reading and I commend it to the House.

Labour has three basic concerns about this legislation, the Corrections Amendment Bill. The first is that it takes us further down the track of taking a core State function and making it into a commercial enterprise that is profit driven. We believe that basic State functions, whether it is prisons, which deprive people of their liberty, whether it is the police, or whether it is the armed services, are core State functions and they should be carried out by the State. What this National Government is basically saying to the country is that it is going to put a billion dollars into the pockets of Serco, which has an appalling track record across the world, and that money will flow out of the country. We will end up with second-rate prisons because they have cut staffing, they have made the conditions worse—

💬 Hon Member: Rubbish!

—and they have undermined the prison’s ability to carry out its basic functions. You might say rubbish, but look at the track record of Serco in its first year.

The second thing we are against is changing the process so that the most intimate form of strip-searching—that is, illuminating the genital and the anal area with a mirror and with lights—will be used in routine cases instead of where there is reasonable cause to suspect. Jacqui Dean says that this will help prison officers. I want to tell Jacqui Dean that the prison officers came along to the select committee and said: “This makes our job harder. This raises tension.” And the Ombudsman came along to the select committee and said: “We have seen more than we should have of the use of this sort of strip-searching as a way of demeaning and deliberately humiliating the prisoners.” What is it about the Ombudsman’s report and the former inspector of prisons who made that report that the National Party members of this select committee do not understand? There is no good reason for a more intimate form of strip-searching.

Since the changes made under the Labour Government we have seen drug use in prison, positive drug-testing, go from 36 percent of inmates down to 5 percent today. They were changes made under a Labour Government. We had the Law Society saying there is no good cause as to why this intimate and intrusive form of strip-searching should be introduced. The figures are going in the right direction, and yet this Government is coming along and saying: “We are going to do something that the Ombudsman, the Law Society, and the prison officers themselves say will be abused and will make things harder for those who have the tough job of working in prisons.”

The third thing we are concerned about is that this bill seeks retrospectively to patch up the botched job done by Judith Collins on smoke-free prisons. I believe in smoke-free prisons, but you have got to have legislative authority before you act. That is something that a Government should understand. Judith Collins was more interested in being the show pony and doing the political spin than she was in getting the law right. The courts have said to this National Government: “You have taken an action that is unlawful.” Now it comes back, crawls back, into the House, and says: “Now we have got to patch it up.” We have got to bring in retrospective legislation in an endeavour to get right what it should have got right in the first place.

I am tired of this Government stuffing up things because it does not put the attention into the detail, whether it is prisons, education, or foreign affairs and defence. Time and again we see these botch ups because of an incompetent Government.

Sitting suspended from 6 p.m. to 7.30 p.m.

I was saying before the dinner break that there are three concerns that we have with this legislation. The first concern is the latest Supplementary Order Paper from the Minister, Supplementary Order Paper 171, which corrects a monumental botch-up. The Minister, I recall, back in 2010 and 2011 announced with great flair that prisons would become smoke-free. Well, I am actually in favour of that. But she was warned at the time that she needed to have the legislative authority to do that, and, unlike Henry VIII, she could not simply make a pronouncement. But a pronouncement she did make; yes, and the inevitable happened. The court ruled that she had no authority to do that. I do not know about the rest of the House, but I am sick and tired of Ministers not doing their homework, botching up their portfolios, and then coming back with a request for retrospective legislation to put right what they should never have got wrong in the first place. So that is the first concern.

The second concern is about the proposal in this bill for what is called intrusive strip-searching. There are two forms of strip-searching that are available to prisons. One is where it is a routine; the person may be required to squat, which may force out anything that they have concealed internally. The more intrusive form is to illuminate the genital and anal areas with both lighting and a mirror. The chair of the select committee said before the break that this would help the prison officers. That is not their view. Their view is very clearly set out in the submissions they made. They do not support this provision. This is the prison officers. They are a pretty tough, hard-headed lot. They say that “It is a serious impingement on the dignity of prisoners and also the staff having to conduct such searches … If staff have reason to believe that there is contraband within a prisoner, we have the ability to place a prisoner in a “dry cell” under observation for a period of time and wait for the contraband to be passed … To include such an invasive procedure like this [the association] believes will result in an increase in staff assaults.”

You know, you can use the more intrusive method under current law if there is reasonable cause to believe that there are things concealed, but not for a routine search, and that is what is being proposed here. It is not only the prison officers who have to carry that out who are objecting to it; the Ombudsman says this about it: “Such strip-searches are highly degrading and prone to abuse. We are concerned that they may become a matter of routine on any occasion when a strip-search is conducted following the movement of a prisoner or a visit. At present strip-searches may only be conducted when there are reasonable grounds to believe a prisoner has an unauthorised item.”

The Law Society likewise says it does not accept that these more invasive measures should be available in respect of all strip-searches. It makes the point that the positive drug-testing rates have dropped significantly without these additional mechanisms. In fact, shortly before Labour became the Government the positive drug-testing in prisons was 36 percent of all prisoners testing positive for having taken drugs. By the time the National Government came to power, and because of the changes that Labour made in office, that had dropped to 5 percent—from over one-third, down to 5 percent—all without this extra required measure.

I have got to say that when we visited Rimutaka Prison—and Asenati Lole-Taylor was with us at the time—I asked the prison manager there, of one of the biggest prisons in the country: “If somebody has something concealed internally, will this more intrusive manner show it up?”. He said “No”. If they have it concealed internally, this will not work. There are other things—there is scanning of prisoners, there is what they call the “boss chair” that they have got in Auckland, and there is a dry cell. All of these mechanisms are available. This measure is not justified. This measure will cause problems; it will not help.

I want to come back to our fundamental concern about this bill, and it is that this bill further entrenches privatisation of prisons. It turns what should be, properly, a State function into something that is a commercial business for profit. We saw Serco, the agency that is getting these private contracts, going to the London Stock Exchange late last year and saying it expects to make $30 million a year. That is $30 million a year out of the New Zealand taxpayers’ pockets to a multinational corporation that will repatriate that money back to where the shareholders live. What good does that do to New Zealand? No evidence has been shown that it will do it cheaper or more effectively—no evidence. To the contrary. What have we seen from Serco in the last year? It had 34 measures of its performance. It failed 19 of them—19. Serco let prisoners go that it should have kept, on a number of occasions, it retained prisoners that it should have released, and, of course, it had an escape—and this was from a brand new prison, the easiest prison in the country to operate, and Serco stuffed it up. We are paying for it to do that.

How does Serco make its profit? It cuts down the staff numbers, it reduces the working conditions in the prison, and it does not meet its responsibilities in the way it should to ensure public safety. So why is this Government, apart from for purely ideological reasons, going down the track of giving private contractors more and more power? They are out to make money. They are not out to look after public safety or to do a good job in not only keeping the prisoners secure but also rehabilitating them. This bill is wrong on that ground, and that is why the Labour Party will be opposing it.

Tēnā koe, Mr Deputy Speaker. Tēnā koutou e te Whare. I rise to speak on the second reading of the Corrections Amendment Bill. The Green Party opposed this bill at its first reading based on our objections to provisions within it that, in its view, diminish basic human rights of prisoners, potentially make our prisons less safe and less likely to achieve the essential goal of rehabilitation and making New Zealand safer, and, as the Hon Phil Goff just said, further entrench the privatisation of prisons, which are really a core, fundamental role of the State. I did not have the privilege of following this bill through the Law and Order Committee; that was done by my eminently capable colleague David Clendon. As I understand it, the bill that has come back from the select committee does have some minor improvements. It is not quite as bad as the one that did go to the select committee, and that is largely due to the excellent submissions from the Law Society, from the Human Rights Commission, from the Howard League, and from Rethinking Crime and Punishment. It was really down, I think, to the excellent work of the Green and Labour members of the select committee to ensure that common sense was actually implemented in the bill.

But we cannot support the bill as it is, even though it has been improved. There are three basic reasons for that. The first is human rights. It does continue the Government’s erosion of the human rights of prisoners. The Human Rights Commission gave the select committee an excellent submission, which pointed out that the cumulative impact of some of these changes is to fundamentally erode human rights. I would like to read from the submission, because I think it really is excellent: “The Commission considers that respect for human dignity, as well as being a fundamental and universal human rights obligation, is linked to reintegration and rehabilitation.” A good deal of research that was undertaken for the commission into human rights in New Zealand prisons found that human rights values have a key role in the rehabilitation of prisoners. There is a report that is called Human Rights and Prisons, and it notes that the international literature also shows that the attention to human rights in prisons helps reduce conflict, it strengthens prisoners’ chances of rehabilitation, and ultimately leads to safer societies. So not only are human rights something that we need to guarantee to all members of society—even those who have been imprisoned—it is actually the best way to get the outcome that we all want, which is a safer society.

I was really surprised to hear the member Jacqui Dean in her speech earlier this evening argue that this increased strip-searching, which is going to really dig right into the most private places of a person, is somehow going to help prisoners who have mental health difficulties and who might be at risk of self-harm, because it would be obvious to me—and, I think, to anyone—and is also confirmed by overseas research that the psychological impacts of strip-searching on prisoners have a significantly negative impact, particularly on the female prison population. There has been a good deal of research from around the world that questions the effectiveness of strip-searching both as a contraband control and as a security strategy. International research has also shown that the number of female prisoners who have suffered violent and, in particular, sexual abuse is very high. So there is considerable risk of the abuse of strip-searches. There is really no evidence to support the idea that it is going to be effective at minimising the likelihood of prisoners inflicting any sort of self-harm. If anything, the psychological impacts are going to be negative and make prisoners more likely to suffer from negative psychological consequences. So it really undermines the whole purported goal of safety in prisons. Also, it limits the ability of prisons to be effective in rehabilitating prisoners, which really is the purpose—supposedly, the stated purpose—of the bill. So again we see this conflict, which is quite common in the legislation coming forward from this Government, in that it has certain stated goals like increasing the safety of New Zealanders or increasing the economic productivity of New Zealand, but, in fact, the tools that it is using to achieve these goals will actually do the direct opposite of what they are intended to do.

A second concern is the ability of prisoners to get adequate exercise. It should also be obvious that fundamental to the good psychological well-being of prisoners is regular exercise—that is true for all humans. Although there was a minor improvement to the bill by the select committee—in that instead of getting rid of any requirement for exercise, it now limits it to 2 days without exercise—we are talking about people being held in very close quarters, potentially in very small rooms or in the back of a prison van, for up to 48 hours without having the opportunity to exercise, simply to achieve a goal of cost cutting. That really is not a good enough reason to stop looking after the health of prisoners and their fundamental right to get out, move around, and get some fresh air, which is going to be better for them and better for all of us in the long run.

On the topic of health, the fact is—and I am going to read from this excellent submission from Rethinking Crime and Punishment—“the state of prisoner health in New Zealand is very poor, particularly in … oral health, mental health, alcohol and other drug related ailments, chronic disease, communicable disease, and disabilities, and is much worse than that of the general population of New Zealand. There is … evidence that the prison environment has a negative effect on the health of prisoners.” There have been a number of reports, notably one from the Ombudsmen, which I believe another member mentioned earlier, which have called for the primary health care to be provided by the Ministry of Health, as opposed to the Department of Corrections. The report of the Office of the Ombudsmen states: “we strongly urge that the Department’s Health Service should be aligned with the wider health system. Health Services for prisoners should be funded and delivered by an agency whose primary focus is ‘health’ and therapeutic support, not custodial services.”, which is what fundamentally the Department of Corrections is responsible for. Similarly, the National Health Committee has stated that there are a number of unresolved concerns for prisoner health because there is a fundamental conflict between the custodial role of the Department of Corrections and the role that health services must play in providing a high-quality service.

It is unfortunate that we do not see the recommendations of these reports being implemented in this legislation. What is worse, there is actually a provision—I believe it is in clause 8, new section 20—that is going to move the responsibility for prisoner health care from the medical officer to the health centre manager, and it is changing the principal legislation so that there is no longer a requirement for a minimum number of medical officers. The language has been changed to just “a sufficient number”, but, ultimately, we are extremely concerned that this is actually just a cost-cutting approach to prisoner health. History indicates that the short-term cost cuts in health care in prisons, or anywhere else, inevitably lead to longer-term social and economic costs in the future. So the reductionist approach of this Government to justice, to health, and to many other areas is actually going to cost us more in the long term and, fundamentally, will not achieve a safer New Zealand or the principles of justice.

Finally, I was quite amused to hear the member Jacqui Dean say that the Labour Party was ideologically opposed to private sector involvement in the Department of Corrections, because I would take it to be a fundamental principle of democracy that the State has a monopoly on the ability to use coercive force. It should not be the private sector because, simply, a profit motive is not going to deliver justice. If anything, if is going to deliver extremely perverse outcomes as we have seen in the United States, where a private detention centre for juveniles was paying off judges to send young people to a juvenile detention centre. That is exactly the sort of outcome that you get, when you have the private profit motive conflated with what is fundamentally a core public role, which is serving justice and enforcing the rule of the law of the land. We are extremely concerned. We will not be supporting this bill for those reasons, because it erodes human rights, it is not going to do much for the health of prisoners, and it is going to entrench private prisons, which are going to be bad for New Zealand. Thank you.

It is a pleasure to take a call on the Corrections Amendment Bill. None of us likes strip-searching. No one in this House likes strip-searching. I am sure that the corrections staff do not like it. I know that the prisoners do not like it, but it is a necessary part of prison life. The best way to avoid a strip-search is to not commit a crime in our communities.

The reason why we have strip-searching in our prisons is that prisoners take contraband into the prison—whether it be weapons, whether it be drugs—and there is a responsibility, actually, to protect not only the prisoner but also the other prisoners and, importantly, the corrections staff. For some reason Labour members do not like the private sector. I do not know what it is, but they seem to have a real issue with the private sector.

💬 Hon Trevor Mallard: We don’t like the private sector getting into people’s private parts.

Well, actually, that is probably a bit unfair on Mr Mallard, because he has had a go at some entrepreneurship. He tried scalping some tickets. He tried taking advantage of some students, so I guess it is a little unfair on Mr Mallard.

However, I would just like to talk a little bit about Serco, because Serco has come under a fair bit of attack tonight. I would like to point out some of the great initiatives that, actually, Serco is bringing to corrections. There is the establishment of the specialised Care, Support and Integration Unit, where prisoners at risk of self-harm are housed. While in the unit prisoners are supported by trained staff and psychologists and are able to interact with, and support, each other. This unit has helped achieve a very low rate of self-harm incidents. In fact, under Serco’s management there have been no deaths in custody and only one self-harm incident. That is a pretty good record.

Serco has taken steps to make prison visits more family friendly, to encourage prisoners to have regular, positive engagement with their children. Maintaining relationships with family, especially children, is a major factor in reducing the risk of reoffending and in motivating prisoners to make positive changes. That is another pretty good, positive step implemented by Serco.

Finally, the advantage of contract management is that it imposes financial penalties for non-performance on some targets. This is to ensure that there is motivation for Serco to consistently perform. I would say to this House that sometimes, actually, the greatest way to get someone’s focus and attention is if you are going to remove some financial incentive. I am in full support of the way this Government is using the private sector, with a company like Serco, to provide very good services and new initiatives in our Department of Corrections. Thank you.

I believe that everyone in this House would agree when I say that this country will not be a good place for any of us to live in unless we make it a good place for all of us to live in. The Corrections Amendment Bill is one of the few bills being introduced in this House that could provide improvement to the way our prisons operate and are managed. New Zealand First supports the removal of barriers to managing prisoners in a manner that is safe, that is secure, that is humane, and that is effective and efficient. We believe that the intention of this bill is to fix up many of the loopholes we have within the current Corrections Act and regulations.

It is our prerogative as members of Parliament to protect and secure the safety of our communities. It is our prerogative as parliamentarians to protect and ensure the safety of our communities—it is important. It is also our prerogative to ensure that the rules we put in place will work. Why? It is because there is a need for real commitment to a safe and humane approach to the containment of prisoners. There is no question about the commitment that New Zealand First has in this area—absolutely no question. We are honoured to have the support of those dedicated men and women who provide security and public safety for our country.

Since the introduction of the smoking ban in prisons cigarette smoking has not ceased. Rather, the ban has now created a black market for tobacco within our prisons. High demand has inflated the price of tobacco to many times its normal price. The smuggling of tobacco is easy money for some prisoners, and will provide a smokescreen for illicit drugs. There are obvious economic rewards for prisoners who successfully smuggle tobacco into prisons. This has also put pressure on prison visitors and on prison staff in terms of smuggling tobacco into prisons. Nobody—and I say nobody—is going to receive extra jail time for smuggling tobacco on its own. It is easy money.

With assaults on corrections officers trebling in the last 5 years, we see a further increase in tobacco-related incidents. Prisoners in the Release to Work programme are free to smoke while they are at work. There is no current legislation that will stop them from doing that. What this Government needs to do is work on a comprehensive and ongoing stopping smoking education programme for all prisoners. After all, it is an unreasonable attempt that comes with unfair implications.

I want to talk about private providers and contractors. The policy of using private firms and contractors for the purpose of operating prisons and prison services is one that New Zealand First will continue to strongly oppose. The incarceration of prisoners should remain the sole preserve of the State. In the past year—if I could say this to Mark Mitchell—Serco has failed our communities and our law enforcement officers and staff on numerous occasions, and one must be working in the environment to know that. This is an unacceptable reality. It is unacceptable. The Government seems to be bemused by it all. The Government is bemused by it all, and has a slap on the hand approach to multiple compliance failures, including failures on performance targets. Serco paying a fine and taking a no lessons learnt approach for escaped prisoners is just not good enough.

As for property claims, New Zealand First supports clear processes in the area of lost or stolen property of prisoners. It has been established that thousands of dollars have been wasted on the processing of such claims. Clear guidelines that will transfer liability to prisoners, making it his or her own responsibility to manage personal property, must be laid down in order to define accountability. This will alleviate the time spent on investigating spurious claims. Currently the time taken up by these deters our officers from focusing primarily on safety and security in our prisons.

The old penal institutions legislation of 1954 gave power to a visiting justice or adjudicator of corrections to impose certain punishments and penalties, which included a loss of remission on any sentence. In 2004 that legislation was replaced by a Corrections Act amendment, and they failed to include this in the amended version in 2005. That was a situation that should have been addressed. The clause needs to be reinstated. It worked when in place, and would come into effect in cases where prisoners have threatened or assaulted corrections officers.

I have spoken before on the importance of suitable training programmes for corrections officers in order to facilitate better enforcement. Pepper spray is locked up or is not readily accessible when needed. That is like having a fire alarm or a smoke detector with no batteries. It may look efficient but it will not do a damn thing when it is bound up with red tape. One-off training of corrections officers to manage difficult and often psychotic prisoners is tokenism, a complete waste of taxpayers’ money, and leaves no assurance for corrections officers and staff that they will be safe in confrontational situations with dangerous prisoners.

The issue of prisoners introducing a shy bladder medical condition as a defence when they want to avoid drug testing by giving the impression that they are unable to produce a sample must also be addressed. Too many prisoners are successfully using this defence after being charged.

Rehabilitation and reintegration is an area I am very familiar with. I would like to commend the Government for its plundering of my member’s bill in making prisoners work while behind bars. I suppose I should be thankful that New Zealand First policies are being recognised. Although we acknowledge that prisoners should be paid for the work they do, in no way should they retain all their earnings. It would be advisable that one-third of their earnings go to the victims of their crimes, and one-third go to the State. At the moment I think they pay some kind of board fee when they are working outside the prison and being paid for it, to pay towards their expenses. New Zealand First believes that they are sensible measures to take. Prisoners would be allowed to keep the remaining third of their income. This would assist in their reintegration needs upon their release.

Let us come to ethnic groups in prisons. The bill’s current amendments do not cater for ethnic groups with a high prison population—that is, Māori and Pacific peoples. There is a need for suitable rehabilitation programmes that focus on these groups. We need to make use of trained local community service providers rather than overseas private providers, in order to achieve the successful reintegration of prisoners back into their communities. At the same time, assessments should be carried out of these providers, as well as the Māori focus units, the Vaka Fa’aola Pacific Focus Unit, and the Whare Ōranga Ake. It is important to note, though, that the Department of Corrections has been relying on a programme with 10 participants at a time, Saili Matagi for Pasifika prisoners, as the only initiative in improving the rehabilitation of the second-highest ethnic group of the prison population. It is time to bring back Pasifika Legend Story Telling and the Polynesian journey or the Malaga Polynesia, which were very, very successful in the last 5 years.

Lastly, I turn to staff training. Staff training programmes must include cultural perspectives, in order that staff may understand and deal with the major ethnic populations in our prisons. New Zealand First recognises that this bill will address some loopholes we have in the current Corrections Act of 2004. However, we have a Supplementary Order Paper coming forward, because I believe that the introduction of the smoking ban is unreasonable and that other areas I have mentioned earlier need to be reviewed and incorporated into the bill. Thank you.

As we moved through the select committee process for this bill, the Corrections Amendment Bill, I guess I acquired a new appreciation of the work that our Department of Corrections does. It does a very difficult job well. As one moves through the changes this bill introduces one gets an idea of the difficult nature of the work of our prison officers. They deal with all sorts of things—strip-searches, reading others’ mail, preventing prisoners from harming themselves, ensuring an opportunity for exercise, access to drinking water, and all sorts of other human rights issues.

It is a very difficult job, and in my view they do it pretty well. So it was an interesting process for me. I got not only an understanding of the difficulties prison officers face but also an idea of life in prison, and the difference between those prisoners who have a will to improve their lives and those who do not. There is an opportunity provided for those prisoners to work and train for the future while in prison. Equally, there is an opportunity for them to do the opposite and stay there for years.

During the submission process the Law and Order Committee heard from a number of organisations from both sides of the fence. It never ceases to amaze me the lengths or extremes some of these submitters will go to to put their point. Consequently, I think it is difficult to get a balanced position on the submissions. Interestingly, tonight we have heard a number of speeches that were very different from any of the information or words spoken during the course of the select committee hearings—slightly astounding, I thought. The “Sausage Factory Man”, for example, Charles Chauvel, objected to the delegation of powers to people on the job, which is a typical Labour Party response—inefficient and laborious. I think that this bill introduces a whole lot of efficiencies to a fraught system, and I certainly have to support the allocation of work to the private sector. I think it is admirable, so I certainly support this bill. Thank you.

Thank you for the opportunity to speak to the Corrections Amendment Bill. I would like to acknowledge the Law and Order Committee, which Mr McKelvie is on. I think that although we have some fundamental problems with the bill, the committee, on the whole, worked quite well together to look at some of the issues that are contained within the bill. There are some serious things that are contained within here—for example, the strip-search change in regime. We actually took a trip to Rimutaka Prison, where, in terms of the ability to ask inmates and corrections officers some pretty probing questions—sorry to use the pun—we had the opportunity to speak to them about some of the practicalities of some of these things that this bill will introduce. I did want to just acknowledge some of the Law and Order Committee members who traversed this bill during the select committee consideration.

As Charles Chauvel, our corrections spokesperson, said in his contribution to the bill, we are opposing this on three grounds—the first being that we have a fundamental ideological problem with the National Party opening up the corrections part of its responsibilities in this Government to private management. We do not believe that there should be a profit motive at play when we are talking about the incarceration and rehabilitation of people who transgress and then find themselves locked up. The second issue that we have an issue with is around strip-searching and the change in regime. At the moment, there are two regimes for inmates—one is what you would call a standard regime, and the second one, as the Hon Phil Goff mentioned earlier in the debate, is one where there is much more detailed inspection with the use of mirrors and lights and the lifting of certain body parts. As Mr Goff said in his contribution, there are a number of corrections officers who came to us as part of the union affiliation to talk about their concerns about moving from what I called the standard strip-search to the more invasive strip-search.

And, of course, then there is the third issue that we have, which Charles Chauvel pointed out, and that is the changes that the National Party is looking at by way of Supplementary Order Paper 171 to try to make good the legislation around the banning of smoking within—

💬 Iain Lees-Galloway: There was no legislation.

No, that is right. There was no legislation to ban the use of cigarettes and tobacco within our prisons—something that this party supports wholeheartedly. We want to make sure that for the safety of the inmates and their health—and also, let us not forget, the corrections officers; they too deserve to work in a smoke-free environment—there is legislation in place to make sure that that can happen. But, unfortunately, the warning that the Labour Party gave to Judith Collins at the time when that primary legislation went through, about the fact that we did not think this would be covered under that legislation, was not heeded. Someone took the Government to court. That person won, and now the Government finds itself in the odd position of bringing in a Supplementary Order Paper to try to retrospectively change the law to bring about what we agree with but what we warned the Government about and said would not work in terms of the legislation that it brought through—rushed through. And now Anne Tolley has to clean up the mess that her colleague Judith Collins has created.

But going back to my first point, and that is around our fundamental ideological idea of making sure that it is the role of Government to incarcerate and rehabilitate prisoners, we believe that corrections is a core role of Government, just like we have our defence force and our police force, and that in the area of incarceration you should not introduce a profit-making motive into that sphere. We believe that it is the role of the Government not only to incarcerate but also to rehabilitate, in the long-term interests of the community, to make sure that there is less recidivism out there, to make sure that the public is safe. We believe that it is the job of the Government to take on an active role, a hands-on role, in that sphere to make sure that prisoners who are locked up are rehabilitated, and when they are put out there it is the responsibility and the role of Government to make sure that they are rehabilitated as much as they can be.

Also, opening that sphere up to private business takes away some of the responsibilities that Ministers have in terms of answering questions when something goes wrong at, say, a privately run prison. And we have seen on a number of occasions with Serco, which runs a prison currently in Auckland, where things have gone wrong. We have had three improper inmate releases, three wrongful detentions, one escapee, and a 72 percent failure rate to get inmate plans up and running. And that is one of the reasons in terms of private management of prisons why we are fundamentally opposed to it. That responsibility needs to be taken back, and if questions need to be asked about the improper release of inmates or wrongful detentions, those questions need to be shepherded back to the Minister in charge of corrections—not necessarily someone who is paid or contracted by the Department of Corrections to run a private prison. That responsibility has to come back to a Minister in this House.

The second point I want to make is also around that, and I think Mr McKelvie mentioned that some of the contributions in this debate were not necessarily accurate in their reflection of what happened in terms of submissions during the select committee process. But let us look at what others who think along similar lines to us think. Rethinking Crime and Punishment came along and gave its testimony to the select committee. It says here on page 13 of its submission: “The incarceration of citizens, their treatment within prison, and rehabilitation throughout a prison sentence is, in our view, a primary function of the Government … Rethinking is concerned that by giving these powers to private contractors, the Government is opening the door for misuse of power, and corruption as the checks and balances that apply to government departments may not be passed through to private entities. Examples of such behaviour have been evidenced by private corporations in the United States”. If Mr McKelvie was worried about misrepresentation of some of the views that were put forward at the select committee, that is verbatim from Rethinking Crime and Punishment.

There is also some concern from the Salvation Army within its submission. It said in its submission that it was also concerned about the business case around private management of prisons. It says—and, again, I do not want to misrepresent it, so I will read it verbatim—“These new private prisons also, somewhat confusingly, go against recent forecasting done by the Ministry of Justice that estimate prison numbers of about 8,200 whereas the Department of Corrections is forecasting prison numbers at over 10,300! Which of these forecasts is correct?”. So we have got real question marks around the business case that this Government is using to justify private management of prisons. The Government says it is using private management of prisons to save Kiwis money. Well, when the Salvation Army is pointing at a rather big, gaping hole around the business case of private management of prisons, I think some serious questions need to be asked.

Also around the strip-search regime and a change to that, the Ombudsman, of all offices, came and made a couple of submissions, I believe. I speak verbatim from a submission that it made on 15 August, for the benefit of Mr McKelvie, where it said that it is expressing strong concerns about the amendment of a section of the Act, “which diminishes the safeguards against prisoners being strip searched unnecessarily or inappropriately, and also removes the less intrusive type of strip search. We have previously stated that existing requirements for strip searches provide a very good balance between the rights of the Department to manage its prisoners and the rights of prisoners to not be subjected to unreasonable searches. In our view they do not need to be changed.” So there you have it. The Ombudsman, in terms of changing the regime around strip-searches, agreed with us that we did not need to go from the two regimes to the one regime, with the one that the Government prefers being much more invasive.

Of course, it was not a lone voice. The New Zealand Law Society also said that the current legislative regime regarding strip-searches is effective and “provides a sound balance between the need for prison security and the requirement not to unnecessarily demean and humiliate prisoners.” So, for Mr McKelvie’s benefit, there has not been any misrepresentation of any submissions in my speech. It has all been verbatim from the submissions of people who gave evidence to the Law and Order Committee. I think they are fair and reasonable concerns about some of the things that this Government wants to do within this bill. We are completely and utterly opposed to the private management of prisons. We have serious concerns about the regime change in strip-searches, and, of course, then you have got the shonky work the Government has done around smoking in prisons.

I am honoured to take a very short call on this bill, the Corrections Amendment Bill. I follow the honourable member Mr Kris Faafoi, who represented the reports of the submissions but has maybe been a little bit selective—it is clear that there was opposition from the prison union but there was strong support from prison wardens themselves around privatisation.

We are clear that there have been some issues, like there are for any organisation when starting out on a contract, but what is really clear is that those were amended, and currently 95 percent of the targets for Serco are being reached. I commend the Law and Order Committee for its work and its recommendations to the House, and I commend this bill. Thank you.

This is a split call.

💬 Iain Lees-Galloway: I believe that it is a split call. It is a split call.

A split call. Thank you—5-minute call.

Well, I am surprised to find myself on my feet already after such a short and pathetic call from, actually, one of the better-performing members from the National backbench. But I think that if Alfred Ngaro really believed in this bill, the Corrections Amendment Bill, if he really had something to say about this bill, and if he thought that this was a piece of legislation that was going to make a positive difference for the community that he has come to Parliament to represent, he might have said a little bit more than the 30-second contribution we got from him.

The Corrections Amendment Bill and the associated Supplementary Order Paper 171 are absolutely symptomatic of some of the idiosyncrasies of the National Party and of this National-led Government. First of all, they express the Government’s desire to privatise absolutely everything, whether it is our State-owned assets, whether it is aspects of the welfare system, whether it is roadside vehicle checking, or now, of course, whether it is one of those fundamental core State services or State functions of incarcerating people who have fallen foul of the law. It does not matter what it is; this Government wants to privatise it. Why does it want to privatise it? Because there is money in it for its mates—that is why. Whether it is selling off our power companies—it is not doing it for mum and dad investors. This is the party of big capital. This is the party of big foreign capital. They are the people who are going to make money out of the privatisation of our prisons, and that is what we are seeing here with this legislation.

But it also represents, I think, the absolutely gung-ho, hands-off, arrogant approach that this Government takes to governing and legislating. That is because poor Anne Tolley has to come along with this Supplementary Order Paper to clean up the mess left behind by Judith Collins, the future leader of the National Party, who was told when she announced that she was going to ban smoking in prisons—something that I think most members in the House are comfortable with, even though when you ban anything you get a black market, and, of course, there is now quite an active black market in tobacco in our prisons—that we were happy to see it happen. But we said to Judith Collins that she needed to slow down and do it properly, because New Zealand is actually a democracy. I do not know whether Judith Collins is aware of that. I do not think she really does democracy very well, but New Zealand is a democracy, and what Judith Collins did was illegal. That is what it comes down to. What Judith Collins did was illegal, and now Anne Tolley has to come along and try to clean up that mess.

The problem with regard to this Supplementary Order Paper, of course, is, first of all, that we are not entirely convinced that this actually solves the problem. It may still leave the Government open to legal challenges. It may still leave the taxpayers vulnerable to having to pay out more money to prisoners who can take the Government to court and challenge their smoking ban. So we are not actually convinced it will do the job. But what is worse is that it is retrospective. This Government cannot even admit that it got it wrong, that it stuffed it up, that it was too gung-ho, that it was too arrogant. It cannot take it on the chin and accept that what has gone already is correct, and that Judith Collins got it wrong and she opened up the taxpayer to having to give payouts to prisoners. Government members cannot just say: “Oh, we got it wrong.” No, no, they have to try to make it as though it never happened—as though it never ever happened. Well, that is wrong. That is wrong, and it just reflects the way this Government wants to do everything fast. It wants to make everything go faster. It has got its foot on the accelerator, but no one has got their hands on the steering wheel, and when that happens, it is absolute carnage. That is the result of this Government’s gung-ho, arrogant attitude to governing.

Incarcerating people and taking away their freedom, no matter what they have done, is a core State function that can be carried out only by an elected Government and the infrastructure of an elected Government. We do not believe that such core State responsibilities should be handed over to the private sector in order for a company like Serco to make a profit. Maybe this is why the Prime Minister is so excited about sending refugees over to Australia, because, of course, it is Serco that runs those offshore refugee detention centres. Maybe it is going to build another one here in New Zealand. Maybe that is what it is all about.

We are fundamentally opposed both to this bill and to the Supplementary Order Paper.

This bill, the Corrections Amendment Bill, represents, essentially, a missed opportunity. There is a great deal we need to do better and differently in corrections. A corrections amendment would be a very welcome thing. This bill succeeds with one or two provisions that will make a situation better around the margins, but, predominantly, it represents a great leap backwards in a number of areas. It is a missed opportunity. It reflects a complete misunderstanding of the real needs of our corrections and justice sectors. It meddles around the margins. It is not a trivial matter, given that last year we spent close to $1.4 billion on corrections. That figure has increased something like 2½ times in a decade. We cannot afford to throw money into a situation or into a model that is increasing human misery. It is not making our communities or our society safer, and it is not getting anything like value for our taxpayer dollar.

This bill makes some marginal changes around health care in prisons. There is a critical need to improve the health of the prison community. Typically, the health status of inmates is much less good than that of the average population. I spoke recently to people who provide services to recently released prisoners and to parole prisoners, and the stories are dreadful. People who have been incarcerated by the State for long periods are coming out with chronic untreated respiratory conditions and appalling dental health, none of which is going to assist them in their rehabilitation or enable them to come back into society. The solution to that seems to be, again, to meddle around the margins.

There was good work done by the Opposition parties at the Law and Order Committee to ensure that we have a reasonable guarantee of having at least one medical officer in each prison. The initial draft of the bill could have dropped that number to zero. There were some minor improvements there, due to the Opposition, but the reality is that this bill does nothing to address the fundamental issue of improving the health status of our inmates, of our prisoners.

The Ombudsman last year gave us a very compelling report, insisting that the delivery of health services should not be a task for the custodial agency, which primarily the Department of Corrections is, but should be handed to an organisation that is primarily concerned with delivery of health services. That is compelling logic, and we would encourage the Ombudsman’s recommendation to be picked up.

One of our primary objections to this bill, as has been said earlier, is that it further embeds the privatisation and private management of our prisons. It creates this almost blanket authority for the chief executive to delegate through a chain of private managers, contractors, and subcontractors. We are reassured that this will not break the chain of accountability. One would have to be an awful optimist to think that three or four degrees of separation from the chief executive will not create a great deal of wriggle room when it comes to accountability when things go wrong, as they inevitably will. For anybody who thinks our private managers in our prisons here will not get it wrong, Mr Goff, in his contribution earlier, recounted some of the rather dismal achievements—or non-achievements—of Serco to date in New Zealand. It has a dreadful record in the UK not only in prison but also in the delivery of health services. It has not performed well in Australia. Why would we expect it to do any better here? Why are we investing—or should I say throwing away—$900 million on a new prison that will be managed privately? A fraction of that money spent differently, spent better, on breaking the cycle of offending and reoffending could completely remove the necessity of the extra capacity that will be provided in that prison.

There are a number of things we could do today, immediately, without spending more money, in fact through spending less. We could intervene in a meaningful way in drug and alcohol addiction, which is rife in our prisons. We could intervene in a meaningful way by providing decent mental health services to our inmates, both in the time they are in prison and when they are released from that prison. None of these things are simple or straightforward. They do require some spending, some investment. But we could do it within existing budgets. We would remove the necessity to have this revolving door where we have something like 20,000 people each year cycling through our prisons—in and out, in and out, through that revolving door. We could do a great deal better. We need to. This amendment bill takes us nowhere near to the place we need to go. The Greens will oppose it. Kia ora.

We have got a good story to tell in corrections. Let me tell you that public confidence in corrections is up by 53 percent. It is 53 percent higher than it was when we came into Government. Prisoner education and employment training places have almost doubled, and participation in prison drug treatment has doubled as well. That is a good-news story that the Opposition does not like to hear.

I just want to briefly touch on a couple of points on this bill, the Corrections Amendment Bill, because my colleagues have covered many of them already. One is strip-searches. The Opposition is trying to make it sound as though the strip-searches in this bill are a completely new way of interrogating prisoners. Well, they are not. Actually, that type of strip-search is already in part of the Corrections Act. We are just extending it. The provision for strip-searches is in section 90 of the Corrections Act—the Corrections Act 2004. Which party was in Government in 2004? It was the Labour Party. Its members are all up in arms about it right now, but, actually, they passed that piece of legislation with that exact type of strip-search in it.

The second point I want to make is around the chief executive officer delegating in terms of private prison management. You know what? This is actually about helping Serco, helping private prison providers, to do their job better, by allowing the chief executive to delegate some responsibility to them. It is about making them more efficient. The Opposition does not believe in that. The Opposition dos not want to help them do better. They just want to bag us and bag private prison management when actually they are doing a good job; they are achieving 90 percent of their targets.

This bill is about making it better for corrections, making it easier for them to serve New Zealanders and help ensure that fewer people reoffend in the future, and that is a good thing.