Urgent Debates — Mt Eden Corrections Facility—Serco’s Performance

I have received a letter from Kelvin Davis seeking to debate under Standing Order 389 the allegations about organised fighting, the taking of drugs, and access to contraband by prisoners at Mt Eden Corrections Facility. This is a particular case of recent occurrence involving ministerial responsibility. Mt Eden Corrections Facility is managed by a private provider but the prisoners remain the ultimate responsibility of the State. The Minister of Corrections has announced an investigation into the allegations of organised fighting and possession of contraband. It is absolutely critical that the public has confidence in our corrections system. Having carefully considered this application, I have decided to allow a debate. I call on Kelvin Davis to move that the House take note of an urgent matter of public importance.

I move, That the House take note of a matter of urgent public importance. Let me say that the Serco fight club situation is an absolute debacle. It is a fiasco. It is a shambles. And it is an embarrassment, not only for this Minister but also for the Government. It has been 3 years now that prisoners have been getting their lights punched out almost on a daily basis, and this has gone on under the watch of Serco. There are so many issues wrong with Serco that it is actually difficult to know where to start, but let us start with this: from the start, Serco should never ever have been given the contract to run prisons in New Zealand. We believe that both the act of taking away someone’s liberty and their rehabilitation should always be the responsibility of the State.

Not only that, let us look at Serco’s record. Just in November-December 2013 that company was made to repay the United Kingdom Government £68 million because it was charging for work that it was not actually doing, and that work was the watching over of inmates when they are rehabilitated into the community. What happened? I mean, £68 million—

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): I am sorry to interrupt the member. I ask members who are leaving the Chamber to do so expeditiously. [Interruption] Order! For those, please quieten down; it is difficult to hear the speaker.

Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker. That is not chicken feed, £68 million. Over in the UK, Serco was charging for work that it was not doing. It was charging for the monitoring of people who had been released into the community, and the reality was that many of those people had actually been returned to prison. Secondly, it was monitoring people who had actually passed away. This is not a company that can be relied upon. On top of that, Serco was considered to be so unethical that the New Zealand Superannuation Fund refused to have it as part of its portfolio, and that is because it owned a third of the shares in a company that makes nuclear warheads.

Eighteen months ago Beven Hanlon of the Corrections Association raised issues around the fight club situation, and in that time, what has the Department of Corrections done about it? It has done absolutely nothing. It has sat on its hands. In fact, it goes back beyond 18 months. It goes back to September 2012 at least, when 3 News reported about Martin Lyttelton, who was an inmate of Serco. He said that violence was rife, especially in Auckland Central Remand Prison. “They were running fight clubs in the mainstream units”—this is in September 2012 and is a reference to the running of fight clubs in mainstream units at Mt Eden Corrections Facility. He goes on to say: “a lot of people were getting bashed up in that fight club-type scenario. In some cases the guards were actually sanctioning assaults by inmates on other inmates.” And what has happened in that time? They were waiting for some hard evidence. They sat on their hands until videos emerged on YouTube, sent out via contraband smuggled into Serco. That shows that this company has been negligent at best.

Then there is a report that was tabled on 9 July last year, which actually covered all of these issues. It spoke about the fight club. Apparently, this report is so bad that it makes for terrible reading. High-ranking corrections officials received that report, and I ask the Minister to table that report, which was tabled on 9 July last year, and also the minutes of the meeting at which it was tabled, so that we can see who the corrections officials were who received the copy, so that we know who got it, when they got it, and what they did about it. Well, we actually know what they did about it. They did absolutely nothing, to the extent that we have seen in the fight club videos. Ray Smith, the Chief Executive of the Department of Corrections, has admitted to hearing about the fight club, but he said that he wanted hard evidence. He has got the evidence now, in those YouTube videos, but it makes me wonder: what about the black eyes? What about the bruises? What about the missing teeth? Were those not evidence of something going on at Mt Eden Corrections Facility? Why did he have to wait for the release of these videos?

This raises the issue of whether those injuries sustained by prisoners were ever reported. You see, in prisons, if there is an incident, guards will rush in and they will stop things, and then they all write up their incident reports, which go to make a combined report about the incident. Yet I can almost guarantee that there will not be any incident reports from Serco but that there will be medical records that have been kept of the injuries sustained by prisoners. It makes me wonder what the correlation is between the medical records and the incident reports. I would like to know whether the Minister can table the correlation between the medical records. We do not need to know the prisoners’ names; we just need to know the numbers. We need to know the injuries, and we need to see whether the medical records that have been collected at Mt Eden Corrections Facility correlate with the number of incident reports. I can almost guarantee that that is not going to happen. A spokeswoman for Serco said on 24 November 2014: “we report every incident, no matter how minor.” Well, if that is the case, there should be those incident reports that I have just spoken about, and I would love to know—love to know—whether the number of incident reports and the number of medical reports actually correlate.

There are allegations that prisoners with severe injuries have been transported out of Mt Eden Corrections Facility to other facilities such as Ngāwhā prison, Manawatū Prison, and Whanganui Prison. Why would anybody transfer an inmate with severe injuries? Let me tell you the story about one prisoner—prisoner Evans—who arrived at Ngāwhā prison, the prison up in Northland, with a punctured lung. He was in such bad shape that the guards at Ngāwhā prison transferred him almost immediately to Whangarei Hospital, where he subsequently passed away—sorry, it was not a punctured lung; it was a ruptured lung, and there is a difference. A puncture is when something goes into you; a rupture is when it bursts from the outside. If you ask any doctor or nurse—anybody who is involved in medicine—how you get a rupture, they will tell you that it often occurs in something like a high-speed accident such as a car crash. We have all heard of people rupturing their spleens in a car crash. Well, this guy had a ruptured lung.

I am told, on good authority, that there is a practice in Mt Eden Corrections Facility that is called “dropping”, where prisoners—new prisoners, usually—who walk into Mt Eden Corrections Facility are sized up by gangs, are bashed up, and for good measure are dropped off the balconies on to the concrete below. That is what happened to prisoner Evans. He was dropped off the balcony, his lung was ruptured, and then he was transferred out of Mt Eden Corrections Facility and sent north to Ngāwhā prison. I want to know at which prison, Mt Eden or Ngāwhā, that injury was recorded, because I suspect that prisoners with injuries are being transported out of the Serco-run Mt Eden Corrections Facility so that the statistics do not reflect on Serco. Unfortunately, prisoner Evans passed away. So people are dying because of Serco. We cannot underestimate the damage and the danger that is going on.

💬 Hon Peseta Sam Lotu-Iiga: That’s untrue.

I hear the Minister say “That’s untrue.” Well, it would be great to hear what he has got to say, and it would be great to hear how he is going to stand up and justify how a prisoner can be transferred out of Mt Eden Corrections Facility with a ruptured lung, only to arrive at Ngāwhā prison, only to be transferred to Whangarei Hospital and then die within a couple of weeks. I know what he will say. He will say: “Oh, the drugs didn’t work—the bacteria-resistant drugs.” Well, how does that correlate with a ruptured lung? He should not have got a ruptured lung in the first place.

At the end of May last year a prisoner arrived at Whanganui Prison. He was limping. Why was he limping? Because he had two broken legs—two broken legs. He was transferred out of Mt Eden Corrections Facility, and he had been dropped off a landing as well. It was written up as a medical report but not reported as an incident report. We have people who are telling us these things, and I know that this Government does not want to hear it. It does not want to know what is really going on, because it reflects badly on the decision that it made to give Serco the contract. And, like I say, people are dying. I had four parents contact me on the weekend, and they said that their sons who are in prison—and we know that they have committed crimes to get into prison—are saying: “Mum, if we don’t get involved in the fight clubs, we will get the bash.” That is the culture that is in the Serco-run prison at Mt Eden now.

A prisoner was sent from Ngāwhā to Mt Eden—and he was intact, by the way, when he left Ngāwhā—and he came back 3 weeks later with a broken jaw. No record of the assault was made and there was no incident report, but there should be a medical report that exists.

💬 Hon Peseta Sam Lotu-Iiga: You’re making it up. You’re making it up.

And the Minister says that I am making it up. Obviously, he has not spoken to the people who work for Serco and he has not spoken to the people who work for corrections facilities, because these are people who are really concerned about the conditions that they work in and about the understaffing that is going on at Serco. They are telling us because they are scared. They do not want to tell the Minister of Corrections, because they know that their jobs will be on the line as soon as they speak out, because that is what happens to whistleblowers. It is not about doing what is right; it is about doing what is going to keep the Minister off their back and what is going to keep their jobs. It is a disgraceful situation with Serco.

Here is another thing that I have been told. When prisons have audits, an auditor will turn up at a prison unannounced and will demand, on the day, the things that they need to look at. I have it on good authority that Serco gets warned in advance. They get told by a high-ranking corrections official that—

💬 Hon Dr Nick Smith: Who told you that?

I will not tell you who told me, because he will lose his job. They go in and Serco already knows what is going to be looked at, and this is the very reason why Serco is getting such high rankings in the tables. It knows what is going to be audited before the auditors get there and it has everything—all the paperwork—ready. It is a disgrace.

I just want to finish off with a letter from a man, J B Kerwin. It was sent to me at 7 o’clock last night—7.23 p.m. It says: “Hello Mr Davis. In my circle of neighbours, family, etc., we don’t care what these individuals do to themselves in prison. Better there than bashing up innocent people when they’re at large. We say, in general, ‘Let them go for it.’ They are probably on remand for doing the same thing at home, in the streets, etc. Just let them be, as obviously they are just doing what they are best at—violence. They’ll never likely be any different. Hopefully they’ll get put away. John Kerwin, Whangarei.” I responded: “Dear John Kerwin. When they are released, they’ll be even angrier and more violent. I would prefer that they were helped not to be violent. Maybe you or members of your family will be in their way one day when they get out. They will have honed their ability to hurt people, but this is what you want. Good luck to you. Enjoy the community you will have helped to create. Kind regards, Kelvin Davis, MP for Te Tai Tokerau.”

It is not just the community that the folks like John Kerwin of Whangarei have helped to create; it is the community that the people who run Serco and the people who have mismanaged corrections have helped to create, because those people who are getting their lights bashed out now are going to return to our communities, and we have to put up, and live, with the consequences of their behaviour and the culture that they have lived in while they have been at Mt Eden Corrections Facility.

I would also like to know about the terms of reference for the review that is going on, because the Minister says that the Ombudsman is able to look into it, but the terms of reference are actually restricted to 3 months in advance. I would like to know whether or not the Ombudsman will be able to have a look at the report that was tabled on 9 July last year and see exactly what it said, because we are going to request the report under the Official Information Act, obviously, and then it will be redacted, but I want to know whether the Ombudsman is actually going to see the whole report and see the whole truth put out there. I have also got concerns about the review—that it is actually going to focus not on the behaviour of Serco but on the behaviour of the prisoners, and the behaviour of Serco is going to be overshadowed by any sort of review of the prisoners’ behaviour, such as the fighting and the contraband.

Thank you for the opportunity to speak in this debate. What we have just heard from that member, Kelvin Davis, is a whole bunch of allegations—unsubstantiated allegations—with no evidence, no affidavits, absolutely no evidence to suggest what he is saying is true. But I do agree with one thing that that member said. I, along with that member, am appalled at the images that were shown in the last week that have come out of our corrections facilities. I am also appalled, and I am angry about that, and that is why I have instituted a two-part review to get to the bottom of this, not just these incidents but other incidents that have come across social media in the last week. That review will involve Serco. Serco is doing an internal investigation. It also involves the chief inspectorate. Also, members opposite have asked for an independent investigation. Well, it also involves the Office of the Ombudsmen. The member asked whether that oversight will be total, and I give him an undertaking that it will be. The independent Office of the Ombudsmen will be there.

What we have in our prisons, in this particular prison—we have seen the violence and we are going to get to the bottom of it. But, as I have said in question time today, that violence is not confined to just Mt Eden Corrections Facility. That member knows it, but members opposite want to make this issue about an ideological battle about public versus private prisons. What I am here as the Minister of Corrections to do is to improve the well-being of New Zealanders, to improve the core safety for all New Zealanders across both the private and the public estate. So that is why we have put in place this review, and the review will incorporate not just what is going on in Mt Eden but we are also expanding it out to what is going on in terms of contraband—mobile phones, alcohol that might be smuggled in, all the different contraband—as well as violence in our prisons.

But I say that with the caveat, and that member knows this, that we are dealing with some of the most dangerous, some of the most violent, and some of the hardest people in our community. That is why they are behind bars. I say to that member that I support the 8,000 staff who work in corrections right across this country, who get up every day and do a fine job protecting him, me, and all New Zealand citizens. So I say to that member: when he trashes the corrections system in this country, when he trashes the people who serve us and all New Zealanders, he should be careful how he puts that, because he is having a go at our democracy and the institutions that protect us as New Zealanders.

So let us have a look at these assaults. At Mt Eden last year, in the 2014 financial year—that member was short on facts, he was short on evidence, but I am going to produce the evidence right here—there were five assaults at Mt Eden; six assaults at Spring Hill Corrections Facility; seven serious assaults, prisoner-on-prisoner assaults, at Rimutaka Prison.

💬 Kelvin Davis: What did the video show?

Well, that member should go and visit Rimutaka and also see how the prison estate—in terms of prisoner-on-staff assaults in the last financial year, there was one at Mt Eden, three at Waikeria Prison.

💬 Kelvin Davis: How can we believe that?

How can you believe that? Because that is what is going on in our prisons. And that member may rail against all sorts of things, and hearsay evidence that he brings up, but I have worked with the member. Every time he has brought up an assault or an allegation, I have worked with the member and I have worked with the Department of Corrections to bring about some sort of outcome and investigation into his questions. That is what I have done.

Let us look at contraband, because that member says again that this problem is confined to Mt Eden prison. Well, clearly it is not, because for the 2014 financial year Mt Eden had 79 communications devices that we found. It had 79. Christchurch Prison had 112 and Rimutaka had 237—237. And that member says there is a problem at Mt Eden. No, we have got issues right across the estate.

Also, I have gone on record—and the member asked this afternoon—about Serco’s performance. Serco’s performance, according to the latest performance table for prisons, 31 March 2015—and that member can go to the website and have a look. Instead he comes in here, waving all sorts of stories, and we do not know whether they are substantiated or not. But I point to that survey of core security, internal procedures, and rehabilitation. Only one prison has an exceptional rating—one prison. That is Serco. That is Mt Eden prison. That is despite the fact that that prison has 30,000 prisoner movements a year—4,000 prisoners go in and out of Mt Eden. As a remand prison, that makes it more dangerous, that makes it more highly volatile than any other prison in New Zealand. If that member decides to go and visit Mt Eden prison—I urge him to go and have a look, as I have—he will see what a dangerous set-up it is, and how the nature of this prison compared with others, in terms of the remand facility, is, dare I say it, highly volatile.

But let us look at staffing, because the accusation from members opposite is that staffing issues have arisen. But I have got an undertaking from the Department of Corrections that it is fully staffed at Mt Eden prison—fully staffed.

But I have put Serco on notice that it has got to—

💬 Jacinda Ardern: They said that 2 years ago. Talk to the staff.

I have spoken to the staff, Ms Ardern. I have spoken to the staff when I was there last and they are on notice that they need to improve. Clearly, from the images that were transmitted across this country last week, things need to improve, and that is what the review is about.

Can I just say about the death of Mr Evans that I just find it appalling that that member Kelvin Davis, who comes in here and says that he cares about families—that family did not want their son and their grandson as part of the political debate. If he knew that family, he would understand that. Instead, that member comes in here and throws around the sad death of a young man. You use that for your political gain. I say to that member: shame. I say to the member: shame on him for bringing that into this House—bringing that into this House. What we need to do as politicians is we need to stay calm. We need to stay calm, wait for the coroner’s inquest, and wait for the chief inspectorate’s investigation, which is what we need to do. But we do not come in here and throw around political footballs of people’s lives that have been lost. And I say shame on that member.

I also want to point out to that member, who yesterday made various defamatory statements about me—

💬 Kelvin Davis: Oh, sue me!

No, I say to that member, put up some evidence or shut up—put up or shut up. I say to you, honestly, you are a good guy, Kelvin—Mr Davis—but if you do not have any evidence around some of those defamatory statements, put up or shut up. That is all I have got to say, all right? I received that 2014 report—I got emailed that last Saturday. I read that last night, and you have got evidence to suggest otherwise? You put up or you shut up. That is all I have got to say.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): Order! You do not—[Interruption] Order! When I am on my feet there is silence. Now I just ask to calm things down and not to bring the Speaker into the debate.

And he also talked about—

💬 Hon Dr Nick Smith: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. You had not resumed your seat and the constant barracking from Mr Davis—he had immediately interjected, to the point where I cannot—

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): I am the judge of that. [Interruption] Order! I am the judge of that, and I have asked members to tone it down. It has been a robust debate, and that is fine. Interjections should be rare and reasonable and specifically on the target.

The member opposite also asked about auditing in terms of monitors and in terms of the scrutiny that goes into overseeing the contract with Serco. We know that there are two monitors in there. We know that the Office of the Ombudsmen can at any time go into Mt Eden prison and investigate and examine and ask questions, and he says that there is no auditing going on. Well, that is clearly untrue. What I am saying is that there is sufficient surveillance and monitoring of Serco’s contract, and it is important. It is important because there are ways in which Serco has to perform to its contract.

In terms of preventing the contraband that we referred to earlier, there are screening methods. There is a lot that both public and private prison operators do to contain the flow of contraband into our prisons.

💬 Chris Hipkins: Everything’s fine, is it?

We have got prison perimeter security, and Mr Hipkins knows that. We limit the number of entry points into our prisons. We do strip-searches of prisoners. We do background checks on those who visit.

💬 Hon Member: Who’s “we”?

The Department of Corrections and public and private prisons—yes, we do that. And we use scanners and X-ray machines in terms of how we monitor those who go into our prisons. So it is an ongoing problem, not just here in New Zealand but across the world.

I was at a conference for Ministers—Australian states and myself as the New Zealand Minister—where we discussed a number of these issues. They are not confined just to New Zealand prisons, and they are not confined just to Serco prisons; they are issues that prison authorities and Governments have to deal with not just here but around the world.

In summary, I just want to say that there is a review going on. It is a two-part review. We need to see what went wrong at Mt Eden prison. We have got to get to the bottom of how these violent situations came about. We need to find out how contraband is being smuggled into Mt Eden prison. I have been assured by Serco that it is stepping up security—that it is stepping up to the plate in terms of the fulfilment of its contract. We have a thorough and robust review in place. It is due next month—part one of the review is due next month, at the end of August, and then the second part, which incorporates all prisons around New Zealand, will be due by the end of September.

I reiterate that we are dealing with some of the most dangerous, violent people in our society. It is not a difficult job, but I support the 8,000 men and women in our public system who work within the Department of Corrections. I support those who keep us safe every day and the work that they do, and clearly, sadly, the member opposite does not believe that to be true. Thank you.

I would like to begin my comments by complimenting our colleague Mr Davis on the work that he has done to date on this issue and on bringing this debate to the House today, because it is a matter that needs to be debated. It needs the light of day to be shone on it so that people can get a better view of what is actually happening in our prisons on a day-to-day basis.

The president of the Corrections Association of New Zealand, Beven Hanlon, is on record saying that the events around fighting and drug use and so on in the Serco prison—Mt Eden Corrections Facility—were known to the authorities at least 18 months ago. I quote Mr Hanlon: “I can tell you now that on 9 July 2014, the chief executive, the national commissioner and the northern regional commissioner all received that report…”. This afternoon we have heard from the Minister of Corrections that the lack of response to that report was for the reason that these matters were unsubstantiated. That is not a compelling or a reassuring response. With all the resources available to both the Department of Corrections and Serco, why were these matters not substantiated or put to rest? Why did it take the emergence of an illegal video to bring this matter to light and to bring it to this debate today?

It is remarkable that we are hearing accusations that the stories emerging from within the prisons are being made up. Like Mr Davis, I also have had contact in the last few days with people working within the sector who have very similar tales. So if the stories are, indeed, being made up, then it is a very widespread conspiracy. The unfortunate fact is that these people are frightened to come out publicly and put their names to these events, and describe events happening in our prisons, because they fear for their jobs. That is a very unhappy situation. It reflects a very unhealthy culture within our prisons. I suggest that a select committee inquiry would be the appropriate place for these people to come forward, with some safety, and make statements about what they have observed and what they believe to be happening, so that we can deal with it at that level.

There is some irony in the fact that the appalling events that have been occurring at the Serco-managed facility have come to light via modern technology, through video taken with cellphones and, presumably, with the phone or the SIM card being smuggled out. I say “ironic” because Serco tells us that it is, in fact, technology that enables it to run a very different staffing model in its prisons compared with our public sector prisons—our Department of Corrections - run institutions—particularly, in terms of the staff-inmate ratio. Earlier this year we heard directly from Serco’s Asia-Pacific operations manager, Scott McNairn. He confirmed that each unit at the new Wiri Prison—this is including the high-security unit—will contain 60 inmates and two officers. Even my arithmetic enables me to say that that is a staff-inmate ratio of 1:30, even for the high-security wing. In the public prisons, that ratio is 1:15—double the number of prison officers. Low security in the public sector has a ratio of 1:20; still 50 percent more officers on deck watching those inmates in low security than in Serco high security.

I suspect that points to a lot of the underlying reasons why these events have occurred. We simply do not have the people on the ground. We do not have the trained, resourced prison officers in the wings, observing what is going on, being the eyes and ears of management, building relationships with the inmates, and making those prisons as safe as they can be. The reason why the private operators run a lower staff-inmate ratio is all about profit. Most of the costs of running a prison are embedded costs. About the only wiggle room you have to try to generate profit when running a prison is staffing, and I believe that what we are seeing happening in Serco-managed facilities is a direct result of their cutting corners on staff. And this is in the first couple of years. Imagine 5 or 10 years down the track of their 25-year contract. We are going to see some very serious, unhelpful, and positively dangerous outcomes because we have the situation where a private company is trying to drive a commercial profit out of operating a prison, and that is simply not acceptable.

I would like to comment on the investigation and the terms of reference. I am slightly puzzled by the Minister’s insistence earlier today that this is actually a review, not an investigation, because, and I quote, “The terms of reference for the investigation of the circumstances surrounding organised prisoner-on-prisoner fighting (‘fight club’), access to cellphones, etc., at Mt Eden Corrections Facility…”. Is this a review or is it an investigation? I sincerely hope that it is the latter. A review, to me, indicates that you have a once-over-lightly; a quick look at what went on. This needs to be an in-depth review in order to get right to the bottom of what has been going on and of what is continuing to occur on a daily basis, to ensure that we are putting in place mechanisms to ensure that we do not see this sort of activity going on in our prisons.

My challenge to the Minister of Corrections would be that the primary investigating agency in this investigation should be the Office of the Ombudsmen. I would argue that the Department of Corrections and, most certainly, Serco—whatever investigative mechanism it has—are hopelessly compromised in this matter. It should be the Ombudsman that is the lead agency. It has the investigative power. It has the authority. It has the confidence of this Parliament to be objective and to be disinterested. And that is where the responsibility should sit. There are experienced people within the Office of the Ombudsmen who understand how our prisons operate. There is a lot of experience there. The Department of Corrections’ investigation, by default, must be hopelessly compromised given that it has sat on this information for at least a year, and, arguably, for 18 months. How can the public have any confidence? You can take it as a given that there will be a significant response, rightly or wrongly, that anything that the Department of Corrections produces can simply be written off as a whitewash. There is too much self-interest for the department, too much egg on its face, and too much potential political embarrassment for it—and there is too much commercial risk for Serco—to allow that form of investigation to take place.

I would also like to reflect on the issue that Mr Davis raised earlier. I quote again from the terms of reference: “The investigation will pay particular attention to the last 3-month period to determine: [a number of matters]”. Actually, the last 3-month period is not necessarily where the problem lies. The “particular attention” phrase does not say that there will not be a longer time horizon for the investigation. Why would you focus on the last 3 months of the period? I hope it is not because the Mt Eden facility did actually have, at that time, a much higher staff count than it would normally run with, because it had officers who had completed their training but were not being transferred to the Wiri facility until it opened. Is it not interesting that the attempt to narrow the investigation in terms of time will overlap with the period when that Serco facility did have significant staff numbers on deck, on the ground, observing prison behaviour and actually seeing what was going on there?

I am also seriously concerned about the matter of health services. Part of the terms of reference is to get information from the health service within the prison. I also have heard entirely credible people telling me that the practice has been to export the walking wounded from Mt Eden Corrections Facility to other prisons. The most extreme example, which we heard about from Mr Davis, was one that resulted in a death that may well have occurred as a result of one of these fight clubs. There has been a compelling and a credible series of comments from people, to the effect that the people injured in these fights must have reasonably serious injuries. There are large, fit men going at each other with some enthusiasm, so there must at least be cuts, bruises, and visible injuries. Is it not unusual, to say the least, that people are arriving in other prisons with evidence of having been in fights and nothing has been reported about this? One would hope that in the health service, which is, unfortunately, also delivered by the Department of Corrections—in our view, health services in prisons should be delivered by a stand-alone health agency that is not concerned or allied with corrections—that those health incident reports would help to reveal what is or is not going on here. There is no question that violence has been under-reported at this prison, unless there is a massive conspiracy between inmates, prison officers, management, and NGOs working within the prisons. This investigation should be comprehensive and it should be led by the Office of the Ombudsmen.

I expected that the Government might actually have an interest in this matter, because it is a very serious matter. The contracting-out of State functions has been fashionable for some time but it has always been problematic. It has been the stock-in-trade of this Government in so many areas and in so many respects, and it comes from the point of view—at least, of this Government—that those with a profit motive can serve the public interest. That is why this Government thinks that it can contract out wholesale very important State functions, now including one of the social support functions, and if it cannot contract them out, hand them over to private investors, would you believe, for a return on their investment. This Government applies that principle of contracting out to the private sector indiscriminately. But there are some State functions, particularly those involving the deprivation of liberty—the custody of those detained to serve penal terms—which, in my view, fall into a completely different category and should not be the subject of contracting-out. That is the Labour view, and we have stood aside and watched what has happened—in this case, in this part of the prison service: Mt Eden Corrections Facility—noting that the contractor that is running it is now responsible also for the guarding and detention responsibilities at the new Wiri Prison. There are hundreds of prisoners under its charge; hundreds of prisoners its responsibility.

We do not deprive people of their liberty very easily in our society, and we should not. When we do so, we do it according to the rule of law. People know what the charge is when they are facing something that can result in the community taking their freedom away from them. They have a right to see evidence of the wrongful behaviour that justifies the removal of their liberty. They have a right to be heard in court and to be adjudicated by an independent judge, free of the strictures of ministerial or other State or Crown interference. That is our judicial system. We take it very seriously when people act in such a way that they offend against the mores of our community, of our society, and when they do so in such a bad way that we find it necessary to take their freedom away from them. That is why we have a criminal justice system. That is why we have a system that we invest a great deal of authority in and give extraordinary powers to to deprive people of their liberty. That is an important part of our constitution, and it is an important part of our community and our society.

The badness of the actions of somebody whose liberty we are depriving must justify their removal from the community. It must be proportionate to their actions. So we do all that, right up through the police investigation, through management through the judicial system and the criminal justice system, and yet we now have this slow erosion of those important public service constitutional responsibilities at the corrections end of the process. It is vital that public confidence be maintained throughout the process, from the time that we send in a publicly funded police force to investigate and from the time that we put in publicly funded judges and a judicial system to rule upon what has happened, to cast a judgment and to sentence and send people to prison and deprive them of their liberty—we invest a considerable amount in it. The question then is whether we should continue to maintain that responsibility as a State, as the Crown, while the person is being detained and their freedom denied them.

We suspend prisoners’ many citizens’ rights, but they do not stop being a citizen, and I see no reason why when we do that, we should hand over their custody and their care to private organisations whose basic motive is to make a profit. In pursuing that motive and in making a profit, they have an interest in cutting costs and in doing the bare minimum so that the owners of that private business get to benefit. That is what is happening here and, as I said before, we should note that Serco, the company responsible for managing Mt Eden Corrections Facility, is also responsible for managing the Wiri Prison. So when we look at these events, of course we need to ask how on earth it is that events such as a fight club involving many prisoners at a time can be allowed to continue. Clearly, it had been organised. Space and time had been set aside. And the prisoners were allowed to assault each other freely, in a way that no one would ever expect to be allowed to happen in any prison in any civilised country anywhere.

Then we have the issue of those fights being recorded on smartphones or cellphones or whatever means were used, which means that contraband is getting through the prison gates and into the hands of prisoners and is being used to record these events. Then there is the act of uploading the footage shot on those cameras or phones to Facebook or elsewhere on the internet. So how does that happen in a prison environment in which prisoners are meant to have their access to things like the internet, if not totally denied, at least heavily restricted or conducted under supervision. Those are legitimate questions. And why does what happened at the Mt Eden Corrections Facility not appear to have happened anywhere else?

So the Minister of Corrections has now launched these investigations, which will focus on the conduct of the management of Serco and, as Kelvin Davis has rightly speculated, most likely on the conduct of the prisoners themselves. But the prisoners are only responding to the environment around them. Typically, that is what happens in highly controlled environments. It goes back to the responsibility of the management and, ultimately, to where the authority—the real authority of Serco—lies, and that is the contract between the Department of Corrections and Serco itself. But that contract is not the subject of any investigation or inquiry. The Minister claims proudly: “We are broadening the inquiry.” Well, he is broadening the inquiry into areas where questions do not arise—into the public prison system. No one has raised a question about that. There is no evidence of this conduct happening in the public prison system; it is what is happening in that privately managed prison facility, Mt Eden Corrections Facility, that is the issue. If the Minister was serious about broadening the inquiry in a way that is helpful to the public of New Zealand and in a way that is designed to give confidence to the public of New Zealand, then he would broaden the inquiry into that very agreement and into the very policy of contracting out custodial services to private operators who are doing it for a profit. That is the real question, but it goes against, of course, the DNA of this Government to do anything like that; to challenge or question the ability of those motivated by private profit to act in the public interest and to take on a public service of such importance as depriving the liberty of those sentenced by a properly mandated and authorised court in order to serve penal time in the interests of the community.

That is what must be investigated. That is what must be examined. It is not just what has happened on these occasions, which has been recorded and uploaded to the internet, and is there for all the world to see and is now being broadcast on TV; at the heart of this is this Government’s policy—this Government’s arrangements—and the agreements it has entered into with the likes of Serco, whether for this facility or for any other corrections facility that it has contracted out. The public must have confidence at all times that our corrections facilities, our prisons, are operated to the highest possible standards, that the greatest possible security is maintained, and that the citizens—innocent citizens; law-abiding citizens—are protected. Of course, there will be gradations of security, but for those who are prone to fighting, to committing assaults, to committing offences in the way we have now seen recorded in, would you believe, a prison facility, something has gone seriously wrong. If the Minister is serious about getting to the bottom of it, he will look at his own department’s actions, in a truly independent investigation not just with Ombudsman oversight but also involving a Queen’s Counsel or a District or High Court judge looking at the total arrangement, the total policy—nothing less is required. The failure of this Government and this Minister to do that means that they are not taking this issue seriously. Once again, the citizens of New Zealand are being treated as if they just do not matter.

The images from Mt Eden Corrections Facility were indeed shocking. They were scary to the extent that people switched on their TVs again to see whether they were for real. As a former senior corrections officer, I am in the rare position of speaking with some expertise, which the Minister clearly does not have. I started at the old Mt Eden prison building, which was called a “real jail in the country”. That prison was from the colonial era, and it reminded me, because of its uncanny similarity, of the old Mumbai central jail on Arthur Road. When managed by the Department of Corrections, this Mt Eden prison worked. The systems worked. All the systems were very old, but the system and the reintegration initiatives taken there did work. The security worked, to the point that it was faultless. We did not have any of these things. There were hardly any cameras in those days. The prisoners were observed and monitored by prison officers themselves, not by cameras. And, obviously, those cameras have failed, except for the prisoners’ cameras, which have really worked, as is evident from the Facebook and YouTube videos.

Prisoners have been moved from various prisons like Rimutaka Prison and certain other prisons that have been closed to accommodate those prisoners into the $400 million Wiri corrections facility. That is another Serco facility that we do not currently have videos for, but it would be surprising if fight clubs, moonshining, and drug dealings are not present there. This is consistent with other Serco facilities, from here to the United Kingdom. Given the housing issues in Auckland, how many houses could Wiri have accommodated? At the prisons, they have lost the opportunity by not better using the prisons that we have. Also, having urban prisons means that we cannot jam cellphones, which we could in rural areas, and now cellphones are being used for illegal activities in prisons, which we have seen in recent years.

As The Telegraph noted recently, the big problem for companies like Serco is delivering a level of service at a fixed price for a number of years. If the costs rise faster than anticipated, then that profit can be wiped out very quickly and the company can then find itself locked into a loss-making contract for years. To circumvent that, these commercial companies and corporates hire a lower number of staff so that they do not have to spend much on staffing, and most of the expense incurred by any prison system is mainly for staffing. So these companies compromise on staff safety, they compromise on prisoner safety, and they compromise on the rehabilitation programmes. So this explains perhaps why staffing was thin on the ground. It is rich of the Minister to write in defence of a private company that makes money by doing things cheaper and that will have to do it cheaper, increasingly cheaper, as each year goes by.

Corrections is a core responsibility of any Government, so this Government has actually been shirking its own responsibility and giving it away to Serco for profits. Serco is all for profits and not for the reintegration or safety of prisoners and staff. They do not want overseas-owned publicly listed companies and corporates to make huge margins off their taxes while Kiwis get laid off in the regions to pay for it. New Zealand First says that Serco’s prison contracts should be terminated on the basis of gross non-performance. It is simply unacceptable for prisoners to have been able to start and run a fight club at Mt Eden Corrections Facility, and it is even more unacceptable for that footage to actually be posted on social media. The Minister of Corrections has to be accountable for this latest incident. We have said it before: he needs to shape up or ship out.

What clause of the Serco contract is preventing the Minister from terminating this contract permanently? Sadly, this is what happens when prisons are outsourced to private operators. Profits are always put before prisoner and staff safety. Serco-run prisons do not have the right staffing levels. The Minister should put all the corrections facilities back into State hands, properly resource them, and give staff the tools to do their jobs. That is what a real Minister would be doing, instead of being the “Minister for Serco”. Time and again we have asked the Minister whether he has confidence in the functioning of Serco, and time and again he has said yes. The Minister has gone to the extent of singing Serco’s praises regarding Mt Eden Corrections Facility. I quote him: “It is a top prison performer on the prison performance table, which measures core security, internal procedures, and rehabilitation.” He has continued that line even today.

We must ask why the country needs to stick like glue to Serco despite so many stuff-ups. If this latest incident is anything to go by, top prison performance can be counted only in Third World terms, by the quality of its fight club, the quality of its illegal alcohol, and the quantity of its drug dealings. This Minister needs either to take up a job at Serco in the public relations department or to initiate an independent, transparent, and thorough investigation by the Law and Order Committee. Thank you.

I was just consulting with one of my learned colleagues about the prison system and about his wider perspective on the situation that we have got to hand here. Personally, I just want to acknowledge the Minister of Corrections, the Hon Peseta Sam Lotu-Iiga, for his contribution. This is clearly an emotive issue for a lot of people because public safety and the safety of prisoners and staff are paramount, and I think that the level of criticism from the Opposition members, targeted directly at the Minister in a personal capacity, was unacceptable, in light of the steps that he has taken quite immediately to come back and try to remedy the situation.

None the less, I think that since this is a situation of high emotion and since public safety and safety behind the gate are paramount, we should still be looking at this in a calculated and measured way. Acting on emotion and on what you see through social media, without the wider perspective, could have a detrimental effect, and, actually, it is insulting to the 8,500 prison staff across the country, who are doing a fantastic job and are putting themselves in danger each and every day for the protection not only of those behind the gate but also of those of us who are operating in general society.

I think that the Minister has already articulated the response, which he has been quick to implement following the reports of the incidents that took place inside Mt Eden Corrections Facility. His response is a two-part review: firstly, investigating the issues and circumstances surrounding violence and contraband use in prisons more broadly—I am looking specifically at the example raised at Mt Eden Corrections Facility—and, secondly, the adequacy of controls designed to address prisoner violence and access to contraband. As the Minister has pointed out, this is not an issue confined specifically to Mt Eden Corrections Facility; it is an issue that has come up in all of the prisons across this country from time to time.

I think the main reason why that is the case is that we are not dealing with the safest and most well-meaning New Zealanders; we are dealing with the most serious and difficult New Zealanders. If you look at the criminal justice system that we have in New Zealand, we go to great lengths to try to prevent people from entering into that level of punishment, because we know the broader impacts on a prisoner once they enter the system and on the rest of their criminal career. So we go to great lengths to try to prevent people from finding themselves in that situation, but those who are in that situation—the 8,500 prisoners in this country—are the most dangerous and difficult New Zealanders.

I would like to thank and acknowledge the 8,500 prison staff under Ray Smith’s leadership, who do a fantastic job every single day. How is this dissimilar to incidents that have happened in other parts of the public sector? From time to time we see that there have been fights taking place between schoolchildren in schools. Does that mean that we should sack the principal and the board of trustees of the school if that takes place? No, it does not. It means that we should deal with the situation in a contained manner and move forward to prevent things like this from happening again. That is what the Minister is trying to do with these two reviews.

Serco is implementing its own review into these matters as well. For the New Zealand First Party to say that Serco’s motivations are to cut corners and that that is how it receives its profit—in fact, it is the complete opposite; Serco is incentivised by safety measures. That is why it takes so seriously its responsibilities as a provider of correctional services to the State. That it is why it is in Serco’s best interests to take the steps that it is taking, by means of a review as well, to prevent this from happening again in any of its facilities. Serco is actually at a financial loss if things like this happen. It is not Serco’s incentive to cut corners and to stop safety. That is the situation where we are at.

I want to talk next about Better Public Services being our underlying operating premise in Government. We strive to deliver better public services, safer public services, and more efficient and more effective public services, and best practice is a key element of that. That is why we are constantly striving for best practice examples from around the world and around this country that we can implement and impose on our public services, so that we get the best value for taxpayers’ dollars and the best value for service. It is not a question of whether it is public delivery or private delivery; it is a case of best practice and generating better, more efficient public services.

A cornerstone of that is accountability and transparency as well. Again, I want to acknowledge the Minister for the quick response that he took to taking what could have been an emotional, knee-jerk reaction to a social media - driven incident. Instead, he has actually taken an independent inquiry through the Office of the Ombudsmen, and that is the next point. For the Opposition to say that it wants an independent inquiry, I mean, you cannot get any more independent than the undertaking that the Minister has given.

Again, I want to reiterate the great job that the vast majority of our prison officers across this country are doing. I think it is not the most desirable job. I have been to one prison in my electorate, under the leadership of Jack Harrison. He takes pride in the fact that he and his 250 staff monitoring the 415 prisoners in that facility love their job. They do a great job of what they do. They take their role incredibly seriously. They know that the activities that they undertake on a day-to-day basis and how they conduct themselves have a direct impact on the rehabilitation of those prisoners. Again, prisoners are not the easiest people to deal with, obviously. That is why they are in the situation they are in. I think for Opposition members to direct their concerns in the way that they have, they need to take a serious look at how they are directing these concerns and start being a bit more productive around how we find a solution, instead of attacking personally the people who are doing a fantastic job of what they do.

💬 Hon Simon Bridges: That is shameful.

It is indeed very shameful. One of the stories that does not get told very often, and it is only until you have the opportunity to visit one of these facilities that you see it for yourself, is the great lengths that the prison service is going to, largely under the initiatives that have been implemented by this Government, to try to bring the people in these facilities back to a more recovered position before they enter the general public again. We have extensive drug and alcohol testing in all of our facilities. There are individual education plans for each prisoner who wishes to take them up. They are available to all prisoners across the country, to provide them with a skill or a qualification so that when they re-enter society, which most of them will do, they can be sensible participants in society, in the same way that their neighbours, their families, and their friends are.

Eventually most of these people are going to be back in society. One of the most fundamental impacts, or drivers, of their ability to re-enter society in a good state, so that they are no longer a harm to any New Zealander, is the 8,500 prison staff in this country, who are working with these people on a day-to-day basis. They are teaching them life skills. We have got one prisoner in Milton who has been working on an Out of Gate work programme. He has been in prison for 20 years. When he re-enters society, he is going to have to learn how to use an eftpos card, a computer, and a phone. It is the prison guards who work with these people on a day-to-day basis who teach them these things.

In closing, I would just like to reiterate my appreciation of the Minister and the statements he has made, and the constructive and quick approach that he has taken to remedy what is a serious situation. I would just like to acknowledge again the staff of the prison service across this country. Thank you.

I call Kanwaljit Singh Bakshi—5 minutes.

Thank you for the opportunity to contribute to this urgent debate. I would like to start my contribution with an understanding of what prison is. Prison is a facility where inmates are forcibly confined and denied a variety of freedoms, as a form of punishment. Individuals officially charged with or convicted of crimes are confined to prison. There are 8,000 prison officers who help us to maintain these facilities, and I congratulate them and thank them for the services they provide for the safety of the public, staff, and prisoners. It is very important that we have these safety measures so that we can feel safe in our houses and at our businesses, and I would like to congratulate them on doing so.

These postings that have come up on social media in the last few days are of big concern. The Prime Minister and the Minister of Corrections have both expressed their concerns about this filming of prison fights and about prisoners being in possession of contraband inside New Zealand prisons. I echo those concerns.

The Department of Corrections is working very closely with Serco, as the manager of the Mt Eden Corrections Facility, to investigate how the video footage was posted on social media and whether those involved should face internal or police charges. I was watching a TV series recently, an American series entitled Orange is the New Black. It showed similar types of problems in American prisons—how contraband is smuggled into the prisons and how the prisoners have got access to it. These are the things that are also coming in front of us in New Zealand.

The Department of Corrections intelligence team will be working closely with Serco to identify the prisoners involved, even if they have been moved to other prisons. It is very important that those who have got access to facilities that they have been denied should be punished, because they are not allowed to have those facilities. The Minister of Corrections has ordered two reviews, and terms of reference have been expressed as to how these will be dealt with in the next 2 to 3 months. The Office of the Ombudsmen will be involved in monitoring the role of this review. The police have also been advised, and they may conduct their own investigation. The investigation will pay particular attention to the last 3 months to determine whether this type of activity is widespread across the site or limited to a specific unit, whether the management or the staff knew about it, and what they did about it. Measures have been taken to restrict the contraband.

It is very important that the facilities are secure and that the staff also feel safe when they are working over there. Serco has put additional security measures in place to boost the monitoring and the search regime. Access to the exercise yards is now more limited and restricted. There are extra searches of prison cells and everyone entering the prison is searched, regardless of their position or role. I visited a couple of the facilities recently: Rimutaka Prison and Wiri Prison, the new prison facility. We were also thoroughly searched before we entered the facility over there. I totally agree with the procedures that have been set up to thoroughly check everyone who is entering these facilities.

I would also like to say that at one of the recent visits I did to the probation office in Penrose, they told us a story about a convict who was totally transformed after working in the prison and who has got a job. Thank you.

I call Jacinda Ardern—5 minutes.

Perhaps I should not be surprised that Government members, in their contributions in this House on such a critical issue as the state of our corrections service, actually reference Orange is the New Black as part of their contribution to this debate. Perhaps I should not have been surprised because, of course, this debate has been triggered by the emergence of what appears to be organised fight clubs, and not just in the corrections service but explicitly within the Serco-run prison at Mt Eden.

This has been happening for some time. Fight clubs are not new. We are now learning that a report was carried out within the Department of Corrections some time ago—many, many months ago—and it was not acted upon. When the Minister of Corrections was asked why he had not acted upon this report, he simply said that he was not the Minister when it was first written and, therefore, it was not his responsibility. I mean, that is almost as credible as having the Minister say: “The first rule of fight club is don’t talk about fight club.” That actually would have been just as credible a response, because we have a “Don’t ask, don’t tell.” response to the debacle that is occurring not in our corrections service but in Serco-run prisons—in a Serco-run prison—and it is an important distinction to raise.

I cannot let the Minister’s speech go unresponded to. He laid out some particularly awful responses to Kelvin Davis’ very legitimate speech in this House. Kelvin Davis raised legitimate concerns not just about the fight clubs or the contradictions that have arisen since this issue has emerged. He raised concerns about assaults, he raised concerns about unrecorded incidents within Mt Eden, and he raised concerns about prisoners with significant injuries as a result of assaults being moved to other prisons to potentially stop them being recorded against Serco’s record.

What was the Minister’s response to those legitimate claims of concern? What was his response to the request from the member to simply investigate, as any Minister doing their job should? Well, first, he called it hearsay. That was probably the response the first time that fight clubs were raised as well. How do you prove that something is occurring within a prison? We are not there 24/7. We hear what we hear from staff, and then we ask the Minister to do the right thing and investigate. To have it called hearsay is simply irresponsible and it is the Minister avoiding doing his job.

He then claimed that Kelvin Davis should put up or shut up. Well, the last time that Labour raised concerns about Serco was when we had legitimate concerns raised by staff within that facility who said that Serco was understaffing the prisons and that at times, on a unit of 40, there would be one prison officer—one prison officer—in the security area, and then one on the other wing. That is understaffing what is a critical part of the corrections service. We raised that, and what happened as a result? Serco issued its staff with what could be considered only as a threat—that any more concerns raised in public would be clamped down on. So that is what happens when this side of the House puts up. We put up, we told the Government what is happening in this prison well over a year ago, and what happened? The staff got threats.

So I say to that Minister that we have put up. It is now up to the Minister to respond. But what this side of the House will not do is put Department of Corrections staff under threat or at risk by exposing them. Instead, it is our job to raise those issues, and it is our expectation that the Minister will do something about it.

Our concerns about Serco are longstanding. It is not just a moral issue for us that prisons should be run by the State. If you remove the liberties of an individual, that should be the job of the State. Why should there be a profit motive in our prison system? But our response to privatisation has also been practical. Serco has an appalling record—appalling—in Australia and the UK, and yet this Government’s response has been not only to hand it Mt Eden prison but to build one of the largest prisons in New Zealand and to hand it to Serco to operate. It is now closing arms of regional prisons in order to make sure that Wiri Prison is full so that it can fulfil its contract with Serco. It is appalling, it is shameful, and the Minister needs to do his job.

That member, Jacinda Ardern, is absolutely wrong on every single count. That is the problem with this debate and that is the problem with the Labour Party members: they are all about emotions, insinuations, and allegations, and they are not about the facts. They are not about the facts. So let us put the facts on the table. These are bad people. That is why they are in prison—because they are bad people. The first role of corrections is to keep the communities safe from them, OK? It is not unusual for there to be incidents of violence in our prisons. None of us condone it, none of us want to see it happen, but the reality is that it does happen. And the facts are that it happens in State-run prisons as well as privately run prisons. No, you would not know that from the previous speakers.

That member has only to look at some of the assaults that happen. I was Minister of Corrections when there was a riot at Spring Hill Corrections Facility. Prisoners set a whole wing on fire, and I did not hear the Labour Party calling then for all prisons to be put under private ownership because the State could not run a prison and keep prisoners safe. So this is hypocrisy. This is all about the absolute hatred that the Labour Party has for any private enterprise in this country. It believes absolutely that the State has to play all roles and no one else can do it. The facts just do not support that. The facts are that Serco actually had a very tough year. The first year that it was running Mt Eden it made a hang of a lot of mistakes, and I think we fined it something close to $1 million. We can do that when mistakes are made in the private prison. We can penalise the prison financially, and we did. When the same mistakes are made in a State-run prison we cannot have those same sanctions. We do not have the ability to pull those levers to get better behaviour, and that is one of the advantages of having a private company running a prison.

The previous speaker talked about Wiri Prison and about how, somehow, we are closing down old, antiquated prison wings around New Zealand so that Serco can run a full Wiri Prison. I mean, that is absolute nonsense. Again, the facts are that a thousand prisoners are currently out of Auckland because there is not room to house them. The facts are that the New Plymouth Prison was built in the 1800s, and it is appalling that the Labour Government locked people up in cells that were designed in 1880. I think that is shameful, and that is the prison system that we inherited from Labour. This National Government cleaned up corrections and focused our prisons on rehabilitation. We are spending much more on mental health facilities. We are building a mental health facility in Pāremoremo, and we built a unit out at Rimutaka for prisoners suffering from dementia. The Labour Government never did any of that. We are focused on rehabilitation. We are spending money on education, to make sure that prisoners have an education and some training when they leave.

The leader in this area has been Serco. If you look at that new Wiri Prison, Serco has come in and shaped the whole building of that new prison around prisoners’ rehabilitation, around training, and around getting them jobs out in the community. If you look at the way that Serco has managed mental health in the Mt Eden prison, it has changed the way the State system looks at dealing with patients with mental health issues. Now, I would be happy to have the argument in this House about whether people should end up in prison when they actually have a mental health issue. Let us talk about that. That would be a worthwhile discussion to have. But at the moment they end up in prison, and Serco, in Mt Eden prison, is dealing with them in a completely different way from how we have ever dealt with them before and having huge success. It was Serco that first introduced at Mt Eden a different way of treating the children of prisoners who had to come and visit their parents. Again, that has led massive changes throughout the State sector.

So yes—yes—there has been talk of fight clubs in Mt Eden since long before Serco came on the scene, way before people came on the scene. We now have good evidence as to who is taking part and the fact that it is taking place. There are legitimate questions to ask, and the Minister’s review will do that. But it is stupid to stand in this House and talk emotionally and talk about a philosophical view that both the Labour Party and the union have against private prison provision, because the facts are that on things like rehabilitation and reoffending the privately run prison in Mt Eden is exceeding the record of our State-run prisons.

💬 Jacinda Ardern: It’s a remand prison—it’s a remand prison.

And all of that is taken into account. If that member actually did her homework instead of flouncing around at social events, she might actually be far better informed about what goes on.

So I do not have to defend Serco; its record actually stands for itself. That is not to say there are not things to investigate when we do have good evidence now that these fights are taking place. They will be investigated, and the Minister has done the right thing. But to stand up here and say that all private prisons are about privatising, that they are not competitive in the market, and that the Government should get rid of them—that is a philosophical point of view, and that is just not supported by the evidence. I maintain that Mt Eden prison, run by Serco, has been assessed, under the same criteria that every other State-run prison is assessed by, as the best-performing prison. I think that we should be biding our time and waiting for the outcome of the Minister’s review. Then is the time to discuss whether you want to make any changes and what changes should be made. Thank you.

The debate having concluded, the motion lapsed.