Appropriation (2015/16 Estimates) Bill

Members, we now turn to the Appropriation (2015/16 Estimates) Bill. When we were last progressing the estimates debate, we were debating the votes in the justice sector—volume B.5, volume 7—Vote Attorney-General, Vote Corrections, Vote Courts, Vote Justice, Vote Parliamentary Counsel, Vote Police, and Vote Serious Fraud. David Clendon had the call, and he has 2 minutes and 5 seconds remaining should he wish.

The point that I was making at the earlier sitting was that it is not that we are spending too little on the suite of portfolios—across police, corrections, courts, and so on—but that we do not spend the money wisely and that we need to reinvest in a different manner and spend money on solutions. In that sense, I think the obvious gap in this year’s appropriations is around the police. The police budget has been flat for a number of years. In effect, it has suffered a funding cut over a number of years.

The police have found efficiencies in their operations, and they are using technology well and wisely to the extent that they can. Nevertheless, if they are to deliver on the Prevention First strategy, for example, they will require well-resourced officers of good morale to do that hard, grinding work to prevent crime in the communities. We will not achieve that if we continue to underfund the police, as we are undoubtedly doing this year in these appropriations. The solution is not to turn the police into a user-pays force, which is the intent of a bill before this House—the Policing (Cost Recovery) Amendment Bill—that effectively, would have police running around with an invoice book to charge people for vetting, initially, and later, potentially, for anything from search and rescue through to educating businesses on how to make their premises secure, and to public education about crime prevention. That is an intolerable proposition and one that we should not entertain at any level. We need to fund the police force properly in order for it to do its job well, and we know that it wants to do its job well. We should enable it to do that.

In terms of corrections, we know that privatisation is not the answer there. That might appeal initially as a cost-saving measure, but over time, as we have seen quite recently, it is, in fact, a false economy, and the public sector can provide corrections services. There is a moral imperative that only the State should manage the incarceration of people. There is also a major economic imperative. Thank you.

It is a great pleasure to rise and talk on these issues in this debate because, actually, this is an area that, as a Government, we can be really proud of in terms of the progress that we are making. It is an area in our country that we can be really glad of—that our crime is at a 35-year low. I think, as we look over the last 7 years, there have been some things that we can be happy about in terms of the things that we are achieving.

The Better Public Services target of crime being down by 20 percent by the year 2017 is on track. We have already had a 17 to 18 percent decrease over the time period that we were aiming for, so we are absolutely on target to reach that. We have identified a number of ways that we can, in fact, make some improvements. There are some things that this Government has done over the last number of years that are helping us to make some of those impacts. We have been very much at the forefront of ensuring, for example, that we are putting victims first. For a long time in New Zealand our justice system was very focused on the criminals, as, to a certain degree, it needs to be. We need to make sure that we are addressing criminal behaviour and the like, but we have not always done the best that we can by victims, so this Government has been absolutely committed to ensuring that we are mindful of the needs of victims.

This is a Government that in the 7 years it has been in power has put through 94 pieces of legislation across the justice area. In particular, I want to point out the work that has been done with the victims of crime reform legislation and also the Harmful Digital Communications Act, which are, as I said earlier, very much focused on delivering for victims. But there have been a number of things introduced, and I want to highlight those things as we look at this sector, particularly when we look at the establishment of a Chief Victims Advisor to the Government. This is the first time this has been put in place. It was advertised last month, and we are hoping to make an appointment by the end of this year. Again, it is something that will ensure that we are going to have victims’ needs very much at the forefront of what we are doing across this sector.

We are creating a National Home Safety Service, which is aiming to assist up to 400 victims of family violence a year, as well as up to 600 children. We are improving judges’ access to information to ensure that they are the best informed that they can possibly be. They will have more information about the history of the perpetrators of family violence and that kind of thing, so that they can make better decisions to keep victims safer.

We are speeding up court cases. We are getting things going through the court system in a timely way. Again, we are not drawing that out, because, as we know, victims have that time frame of the justice system, and when the wheels of justice move slowly, victims face the issue of perhaps being revictimised all over again and having to live with that, and not being able to move on from the trauma that they have suffered. So speeding up that court process is another important aspect of what we are doing.

There are a number of other things that have been introduced. If we look at the $50 offender levy, which was scoffed at by a lot of people, what we have actually seen is that this has generated more than $16 million since its introduction. That has gone towards funding at least 15 new grants and services to provide key victim support services that were not previously available. If we look at this kind of approach to justice, it makes a whole lot of sense. Yes, perpetrators and those who have been found guilty need to be held to account. They need to be punished at different times, but we all know that restitution and restoring things is a very important part of it, particularly for victims. So that offender levy is a critical part, going forward, of what we are going to see, ensuring that victims will be helped out.

We are seeing an increase in the number of in-court victims’ advisers. They are being contacted by 35,000 victims a year, and we are seeing that sort of service increasing. We are starting to see people engage with it, and I think it is providing long-term benefits for the victims of crime.

It was interesting that the previous speaker, David Clendon, brought up the police. Well, we have put more police on the beat.

I would like to start off by talking about the police as well. I noticed that Jono Naylor, the speaker who has just finished, said that the National Government is putting more emphasis on victims. Let me tell you now that the resolution rates for high-volume crimes such as burglary and car theft are below 10 percent. If the National Government were really serious about the needs of victims, the first thing it would do would be to address those low resolution rates. You cannot tell me that any criminal or burglar would be put off from committing those crimes if they knew they had a greater than 90 percent chance of getting away with it successfully.

One of the reasons, though, that these resolution rates are so low is that the police are being continually asked to do more with less. There is a $15 million cut to the police budget this year. I know that the Minister of Police denied that, but the first thing in the Attorney-General’s report in the Finance and Expenditure Committee was to confirm that there was a $15 million decrease in the police budget, and in real terms over the last 4 or 5 years there has been about a $300 million decrease in the police budget. So, continually, the police are being asked to do more with less.

I believe there is a police wage round going on. General duties constables have had an increase in their salaries over maybe the last 4 or 5 years of about $5,000, while at the same time in the period since, I think, 2009 to 2013, the Commissioner of Police has had a $100,000 rise in his salary. I would like to think that the men and women on the ground, who are doing the hard work and who are putting themselves in the front line there and in harm’s way, would get a wage increase relative to what the police commissioner gets. But, that said, if they were to get a substantial salary increase, which I believe they deserve, then that would mean there would be further cuts in other areas such as police cars or maybe some of the technology that is being rolled out. There has been an 18 percent drop in the number of general duties constables over the last little while, as well.

Sexual assaults and violent assaults are areas on the rise. In fact, the statistics say that only 5 percent of sexual assaults are reported and, of that 5 percent, only 1 percent will ever see a conviction, and that is just simply unacceptable. We need to have a greater emphasis on the investigation of sexual assaults. We need to take it a lot more seriously, and violent assaults as well.

The policing budget has an emphasis on revenue-gathering policing, such as intersection behaviour and lane-changing compliance, the use of mobile phones, and warrants and certificates of fitness. We can understand that there is some emphasis on that and that people can be killed, and are killed, by vehicle violations, but the reality is that we also need to have an equal emphasis on those high-volume crimes such as burglary, sexual assaults, and violent assaults, as well.

I would just like to also talk about the speeding up of court processes, which the previous member spoke about. It is a nice segue into the corrections debacle. One of the things that we are hearing about the botch-ups at Serco, with all the lockdowns that are going on, is that lawyers are having difficulty getting access to their clients. In fact, instead of being able to spend 2 or 3 days preparing cases with their clients, lawyers are having to spend 2 or 3 days just trying to track down where their clients have been transferred to. There is a lack of communication. So when lawyers finally get in touch with their clients, they have a very short time to actually prepare a case, and that is basically causing a logjam in the courts. So the whole corrections episode with Serco shows that the Government’s privatisation agenda is a complete and utter failure.

One of the main issues around Serco is the fact that it is a business and it wants to make a profit. So it cuts corners, and one of the main corners that it is cutting is staffing. So in terms of the lack of staffing, in the contract Serco does not actually have to have a ratio of prisoners to corrections officers, which is outrageous. The general rule of thumb is that there should be one corrections officer for every 20 inmates. If it is higher security, then it should be one to about 15. There are stories emerging from Serco that at times there is one corrections officer looking after up to 55 inmates. You can understand how those Serco guards would be hesitant to get out into the general population. If there were some sort of fracas that broke out, their lives would be in danger, and they would not have their colleagues there to help them get out of it.

I have also been told that most of the contraband that comes into Serco is via guards, who, because there are not enough guards to check other guards coming in, are able to bring in contraband. If you go to Department of Corrections - run prisons, anybody who goes through is searched. The other day I was down at Otago Corrections Facility and we were led around by the head of the facility himself. When he came out to greet us and he had to go back in, he had to remove his belt, his keys, his watch, his shoes, and everything. Apparently, in Serco there is just not enough staff to be able to monitor other staff coming in. When you are as poorly paid as the Serco guards, it is quite tempting to bring in contraband and to actually get paid for it. So what actually happens is that the inmates have access to cellphones, as we all know, because they have been taking videos of themselves in the fight clubs. They are also able to ring outside and make arrangements for payments to guards who have brought in contraband.

I spoke to a Serco guard, who did not want to be named, obviously, because his life would be in jeopardy if he was named, and he was telling me this outrageous figure. In fact, it was so outrageous I did not believe him. I said: “Well, how much can a guard get? What’s in it for him if he brought in a packet of cigarettes?”. He said: “If a guard brings in a packet of cigarettes from the outside, he can get $1,000.” I actually did not believe him, but the very next day I met with an inmate who had been released the day before, and I said to him: “Look, I’ve heard this outrageous story about the value of a packet of cigarettes. You tell me, because I just want to confirm this.” He said: “Actually, for a 50-gram pack of tobacco, a guard can get $800.”—for 50 grams’ worth of tobacco. If you are a guard and you can get $1,000 for bringing in one packet of cigarettes, you may as well bring in 10 packets of cigarettes and get $10,000. It sounds outrageous, but that is the black market value within prisons for this type of contraband.

A cellphone is valued at over $1,000, and those cellphones are not only being used to organise a meth ring from the inside, as we know, but also being used to intimidate families. There was an inmate whose mother got a phone call saying: “If you don’t put money into a certain bank account, well, then your son will get the bash.”

The review of Serco, to me, is going to be a whitewash because it is Serco reviewing itself and the Department of Corrections reviewing Serco, and there is the Ombudsman floating around somewhere. Because we know Serco is such a mess, it is interesting that the Minister of Corrections has got Serco to review itself. But when we come down to Tony Robertson, we know that the Department of Corrections actually did a good job in monitoring him while he was on release. But it is interesting that the Minister has gone and got an independent person to review it, knowing that the review will come out well because the Department of Corrections Chief Probation Officer, Darius Fagan, actually did a review a couple of weeks back and said that it did a very good job of it.

So I ask the question: why is there an independent review of one aspect of the Department of Corrections when it already knows that it has done well, and yet, when it is looking at Serco, Serco gets to review itself and the Department of Corrections gets to review Serco? The first term of reference around Robertson is the management of Robertson prior to and following his release. Well, that has already been done by Darius Fagan. Then the second term of reference is the way the Government—

I want to talk about legal aid, because access to justice is becoming more and more difficult. Costs are very high, even for relatively minor matters. Legal aid was, of course, designed to provide legal representation for people who could not afford it by themselves. It was never a grant, except to parties who could not afford to repay a Legal Services Agency grant. Originally, the qualifying criteria made it possible for people at the lower end of the socio-economic scale to access legal aid, and that worked very well. But now the criteria are so tough that very few people actually qualify.

I want to refer specifically to the Legal Services Regulations as they now are, because they specify that the maximum levels of income for the purpose of determining an applicant’s eligibility for legal aid in respect of a civil matter are: “(a) $22,366 per year for a single applicant: (b) $35,420 per year for an applicant with—(i) a spouse or partner; or (ii) 1 dependent child: (c) $50,934 per year for an applicant with—(i) a spouse or partner, and 1 dependent child; or (ii) 2 dependent children:”. So that is a pretty low level. It is even tougher when it comes to the maximum levels of disposable capital for the purposes of eligibility for legal aid. It specifies for a civil matter that the maximum is $3,500—an incredibly low figure, in my view. However, if the applicant has a spouse or partner, or one or more dependent children, the maximum level of disposable capital for that applicant is calculated by adding an allowance of another $1,500, but even then it is an incredibly low total.

The income and capital thresholds for qualification for legal aid are now so low that many people will simply go unrepresented. And these are not wealthy people. They are ordinary people who find it too tough to pay legal costs without some assistance. So the capital and income thresholds need urgent revision upwards so that people can get legal representation. Far too many are now forced, for economic reasons, to represent themselves. That leads, of course, to poor-quality justice. It leads to a greater burden of time on the courts, it leads to greater use of appeals, and it leads to more injustice than would be acceptable in a modern society.

To make matters worse, the Legal Services Commissioner now must refuse legal aid if the applicant is in arrears for repayments on previous legal aid grants, subject to an interests of justice test. Nevertheless, the commissioner’s assessment about what is in the interests of justice can be very difficult, especially for unrepresented parties, to argue successfully. In addition to that, I actually do not personally trust the commissioner’s discretion on the interests of justice test in those circumstances.

This provision concerning arrears is intended to encourage legally aided people to start repaying their debt. There is nothing wrong with that objective, but there is actually very little evidence to show that it is likely to have any positive effect on that objective at all. The reason for that is perfectly obvious, and it is simply that the people in that position actually do not have the money to do the repayment of debt that is required of them. So it cannot really have a positive effect in those circumstances. What it does do is cause injustice by making legal aid unavailable in far too many cases so that people either give up or have to represent themselves, and I have already spoken about the results of that.

The Legal Services Act saying that the amount owing is collectable as a debt and that that should be enough is not sufficient in my view. That needs to be reviewed as well. In addition, we should be deleting the $50 user-charge. That is wrong. Many lawyers simply pay that on behalf of their client. It really is just penny-pinching on behalf of the State and really is not much more than a blatant attempt to try to suppress demand. That, of course, is wrong in terms of what the Act is all about and what legal aid should be for. The money lost by the Crown would be very small if that user-charge was abolished, but the effect on low-income people would be disproportionately high and very positive.

I would like to turn next to the issue of charging interest on legal aid debt. It is absolutely wrong in principle, in New Zealand First’s view. It is true that interest could be written off under the existing provisions in the Act, but it does require evidence of serious hardship, and the definition of serious hardship shows that it is a very high bar to reach. As a result, of course, it will again be low-income people—not people at the very lowest rung, but people just above it—who will suffer and be badly affected by this particular provision, which I think is Draconian. The State should not be a banker in these matters, seeking interest at the rate of 8 percent. It should be seen as a public service, and there should be no interest charged on legal aid debt.

The Government has lost its way as to what legal aid is really about. It is really about access to justice. That is what we are losing, and it is a very bad trend. Legal aid must be fair for people unable to afford a lawyer, so that they can get sufficient assistance to take legal proceedings that have a reasonable prospect of success and to ensure assistance to people who have no choice but to defend proceedings brought against them. Many of them simply cannot afford to do so because they cannot get legal aid. So in the end, in its quest to move into surplus, this Government, through its Budget cuts over recent years, has limited access to justice for lower-income people. The very people who need legal aid the most are the ones who are going to suffer.

The restrictions in legal aid have gone far too far, and combined with the increasing expense of the legal system and legal costs generally, the result in far too many cases is that many, many people will be effectively priced out of the justice system. I think that that must change. This is a very serious issue, and I call on the Government to look at legal aid again, especially those thresholds I referred to but also the whole system. It really is not working any more for low-income people, and it is an urgent matter. It is an urgent matter that has not been addressed in this Budget, and it needs to be looked at in the very near future.

I am pleased to take a call in the estimates debate on the justice sector this evening, particularly in response to the recent initiatives from this Government in response to the crisis we have in this country around domestic and sexual violence. It is nice to stand up and offer unequivocal support for the actions of this Government. It is a very rare event for me to be able to do so, and I do. I commend the Minister of Justice for making domestic violence her priority, and I acknowledge that she said in the media that she could have gone for easy wins and that this probably will not provide the easy wins. But it is addressing an absolute crisis in this country and I commend her. It is not going to be simple. We are not going to get quick results, but it is worth doing.

She has rightly noted that there are 100,000 family violence call outs to the police every year. That is one call out every 5 minutes, and this work accounts for 41 percent of the police’s work. Yet we know that only around 10 to 20 percent of the incidents of domestic violence are actually even reported to the police. We know that although the number of cases reported to the police is going up at the moment, the number of cases being resolved has dropped by 10 percent since 2008. There is something going wrong if the number of reported cases is going up and the number of cases being resolved by police is going down. So we need desperately to have a very comprehensive look at this problem. This is one in three women in this country who over their lifetime are likely to be victims of domestic violence.

We also have an epidemic rate of sexual violence, where one in three or four girls is likely to be a victim of sexual violence in this country and one in six to 10 boys is likely to be a victim of sexual violence in this country. We have a conviction rate for sexual violence of around 1 percent and of less than 2 percent for domestic violence. So this Government is doing the right thing in making this a priority. I would just like to offer it some advice and some encouragement to have the public participate in the consultation.

I do think the Government is going to have to review its Better Public Services target to bring down the crime rate. The target is to reduce the crime rate by 20 percent by 2017, and what I am hearing from the community and on the ground is that that reduction and police resolution of family violence cases is a result of that Better Public Services target to reduce crime. We need to have all of the incentives lined up, going the right way, and when we know that only 10 to 20 percent of cases are coming to the police’s attention, we need to be encouraging them to resolve things. That, in the short term, is going to result in an increase in recorded crime. That is just going to be part of the process and we have to go through it if we are going to get on top of this problem as a country.

I also want to point out that the Prime Minister has noted that it is possible that the Government may need to spend a little bit more money in this area. Well, from speaking to so many organisations on the ground, hearing about the situation around legal aid, and knowing the pressures on police, there is no doubt that we are going to have to spend more money. The majority of funding in this area is going to the corrections system, our prisons. We have a 1 to 2 percent conviction rate, so we know that that money is not actually doing anything to resolve the issues in the long term when it is touching only a tiny little part of the problem. And prevention—the amount of money that is being spent in this area is 1.5 percent of the Government’s spending. A similarly small—not quite that small, but inadequately small—amount is going towards counselling and support services and wraparound services for offenders and people who use violence, as well as towards victims. If we want to be able to break these patterns and get people to change their behaviour and help women and children to get to safety, we actually have to resource those efforts in a complete, wraparound way.

The third point I just want to touch on is that I do hope that the Minister is not dropping sexual violence as her priority, though the discussion document is focused on domestic violence, because the Law Commission has a comprehensive body of work to look at.

It is an honour to speak in the estimates debate about law and order. I follow Jan Logie and the comments that she has made in regard to domestic violence. I know that in the last term we too were involved with the inquiry into the funding of sexual violence social support services. And, also, just recently there was a hīkoi that Kelvin Davis led and was part of. Again, it addressed the issues around men against sexual violence. The whole issue is something that I think is of concern across parties and across Government. Prior to entering Parliament, I was also on the task force for family violence under the previous Government, so this is an issue that has been there for such a long time. It has been a critical issue. It is an issue that has raised both awareness and also, along with that, a number of systemic areas of concern that we have to deal with, and I believe that that has been part of this Government’s focus as well.

Violent crime has been rising—we know that. The criminal justice system has needed accountability and focus on victims, and that has been the key driver for this Government in the direction of the justice sector. It has been our belief that our having a tough stance on law and order means that New Zealand’s recorded crime rate is falling and is at its lowest level since 1978. Although we can applaud the fact that we now have one of the lowest crime rates in 30 years, we know that family violence, domestic violence, and even sexual violence are still areas of concern, and we do not shy away from that. In fact, as the previous speaker did, I want to applaud again the comments of the Minister of Justice, the Hon Amy Adams, who has taken a lead in a direction and area for us to be able to champion that. And, actually, the way that she has been able to do that is that National’s focus is on getting the key justice sector agencies to work together—that is, justice, police, and, yes, even corrections—in this regard. That is really important.

One of the areas that I think has not been addressed or touched on, either, in the debates so far, in regard to law and order, is some of the focus and priority areas, especially those that impact on both our Māori community and vulnerable children. Several challenges remain, and we know that the incidence and impact of crime is unevenly spread. In fact, research shows that 6 percent of adults experience 54 percent of the crime. But an area of concern for this Government is the over-representation of Māori in the criminal justice system, both as offenders and even as victims of crime. Māori are in prison at six times the rate of non-Māori, and it is estimated that 22 percent of Māori males born before 1975 had a corrections-managed sentence before their 20th birthday and that 44 percent had such a sentence by the age of 35. This is an area of concern for this Government. It is an area that we want to address as well, because the rate of offending for Māori youth has fallen by 53 percent from 2008 to 2014. However, there is still much work to be done, and we know that these are critical areas for us.

One of the areas of focus for this Government is in putting victims first. We have introduced the $50 offender levy, which has generated more than $16.6 million since its introduction. This has gone towards funding 15 new grants and services to provide key victim support services that were not previously available. The ministry funds victim support, and it provides nationwide, 24/7 crisis response and ongoing support services, so that more than 34,000 victims were supported in 2013 and in 2014. The Victims Centre manages funding for victims of serious crime through the $50 offender levy. In 2013 and in 2014 the centre funded $5.9 million of grants and services that was provided to almost 5,500 victims of serious crime and tailored to their specific needs. During the court process, the ministry had 84 in-court victims’ advisers. It contacted about 35,000 victims a year, and there have been 24,000 using the service since 2013-14, as well. There has also been an increase in funding for restorative justice programmes, which are available to courts as an option for pre-sentencing and to provide an alternative way of responding to crime and addressing harm to victims. The increase in the penalty for breaching protection orders to 2 to 3 years’ imprisonment has also made a difference.

National passed the Victims of Crime Reform Bill in order to improve the rights and services for all victims, and we passed the Harmful Digital Communications Bill to protect victims from cyber-bullying as well. What we are also doing is strengthening sentencing, parole, and bail. We have passed the Bail Amendment Bill in order to tighten up on bail and to introduce electronically monitored bail.

I would like to speak to Vote Corrections. There are some interesting figures in this document, the Estimates of Appropriations. Although the overall increase in the vote for corrections goes up 2.7 percent, the total amount paid in the next 12 months to Ministerial Services, which the Department of Corrections uses for responses to ministerial correspondence, and for the Parliamentary Service actually goes up by 6.5 percent, by my reckoning. I wonder what that is in aid of. Why is there the 6.5 percent increase for ministerial correspondence and parliamentary questions? I would hazard a guess and say that corrections is receiving a lot of attention from the Opposition. I think that is probably the reason why that has gone up 6.5 percent, and overall the budget has gone up only 2.7 percent.

But the key thing that I want to talk about, actually, is the absolute failure of prison privatisation. We have got the report of select committees on the estimates and, according to the Minister of Corrections, the department’s public-private partnership with Serco was proving beneficial to both parties, as they could share and model best practice for the most effective use of taxpayers’ dollars. Well, I would challenge that. I think the evidence and the information that has come to the attention of the House quite clearly says that it has been an absolute, dismal failure. I think that the vote, the amount of money put aside within this Budget, may not be enough to run the prisons, because, as we know, there are a number of reviews being carried out as we speak, the result of which may have implications upon this budget. So I would question that.

I also question the statements made in this Chamber by the former Minister of Corrections Anne Tolley, who said: “the privately run prison in Mt Eden is exceeding the record of our State-run prisons.” Well, I do not think that is correct, either. I think that is part of the hospital pass that she has made to the current Minister of Corrections, and this experiment in privatisation of prisons is not working. I think that the New Zealand public deserve some assurances that the people who are sent to prison are well looked after and are rehabilitated, because eventually they are going to come back out into our communities. So the appropriation should reflect that, and I do not think it really does.

I do not think there is enough being done, particularly in the privately run prisons. I think the numbers that have been used, which the former Minister of Corrections Anne Tolley referred to, in particular to Mt Eden prison, are definitely skewed, because that is a remand prison. So the majority of the people in there—those ones on remand, of course—are going through the court system. It is the minority who are in there who are going through programmes for rehabilitation.

The issue that we have been hearing, time and time again, is that the most difficult inmates are transferred to other prisons, to State-run prisons. That is a huge problem, because when you are looking at the statistics around how well that particular prison is doing, quite clearly those numbers are skewed. I think we are seeing only the tip of the iceberg.

I would like to highlight the lack of taxpayer funding being allocated to one of the most important sectors of our law and order machinery, and the most important of our public services, which is the corrections system. We need prisons to be safe for both staff and prisoners, and we need them to function in a way that they will deliver the services they are being paid for. At the moment it is not happening.

Serco has been given the contract for some years now to run the old Mt Eden Corrections Facility, and Serco was branded by the Minister of Corrections as having the most successful and the highest-performing prison in the country. Well, that is not a fact, because, time and again, Serco has proved that it is not up to the game. There were the infamous fight clubs. There have been extortion calls going out to community members. There has been drug taking and home brew being used by those prisoners in Serco’s prisons, and the reason for that is that Serco does not maintain the same staff-to-prisoner ratio as the Department of Corrections has. And Serco does get away with it.

With the $30 million - odd Serco gets every year, its aim is to save the maximum and send it overseas as profits, because that is what it is—a profit-making corporate. It does not have the safety and the security of prisoners and officers in mind; what it has in mind is its profits, and it has been able to achieve that. But what we have not been able to achieve is getting the service that we pay for. The taxpayers are not getting their money’s worth from Serco, and that has been proved beyond doubt, starting with the fight clubs, the extortion calls that have been going out to the community, the use of banned cellphones inside the prison, the weaker prisoners being stood over, as they call it, and the weaker prisoners being thrown off balconies, being injured, and then being passed on to other Department of Corrections - run prisons, just to cover that up. So there is a real danger to the safety of prisoners and staff.

Now, after the so-called fiasco, the Department of Corrections has posted 20 staff from the corrections system to assist with the management of the Serco-run—or, rather, the Serco-mismanaged—Mt Eden Corrections Facility. Those 20 staff are actually filling in for the shortage of staff that Serco has been making money on. So now our question is: what will happen after the dust has settled? Will they be called back to corrections prisons, and, if that happens, what will happen to the staff-to-prisoner ratio in Serco prisons? That is a question we need to get answers for. Serco-run prisons do not have the rehabilitation programmes that Department of Corrections - run prisons have. Serco had cut funding to that also, just to make profits.

It is a shambles at the moment. We have got prisoners absconding to Brazil, we have got offenders killing women while on electronic monitoring, and we have got them cutting off bracelets so they can have some free time on the outside. That is really concerning. We cannot have it and we cannot have prisoners organising fight clubs, bullying prisoners, or injuring prisoners and even killing them. We just cannot have it. This Minister is letting this slip by on his watch.

So why are we even thinking of funding such a public-private partnership? Serco has proved time and again that it is not capable of running a prison like the Mt Eden Corrections Facility, and yet it is being rewarded, which is a double whammy. It does not deliver, and yet it gets rewarded. Recently, the Department of Corrections chief executive officer declared that he is going to fine Serco half a million dollars. Well, that actually is not a fine; that will be deducted from the bonus it would have otherwise got had it performed to standards—and clearly it has not.

What we have suggested is that instead of putting our own staff at risk, our own people at risk, and our prisoners at risk, we should withdraw Serco’s contract altogether.

It is an honour to take a call on the Appropriation (2015/16 Estimates) Bill. I just want to touch on some of the areas of corrections that members across the Chamber have alluded to. We will agree across this Chamber, firstly, that the safety and security of staff, of the New Zealand public, and of prisoners is paramount—it is paramount. Secondly, as has been alluded to by colleagues across the Chamber, the rehabilitation of offenders is also really important. It is important because most of the offenders who go to prison ultimately get out and we have got to get them reintegrated and rehabilitated so that they can take part meaningfully in our society once they return to civil society.

I just want to touch on a couple of points that members across the aisle talked about today. It is about justice for people, and I, like many across this country, was appalled at some of the footage around the fight clubs that were allegedly happening at the Mt Eden Corrections Facility. That is why we put in place a review by the chief inspectorate, overseen by the independent office of the Ombudsman, which is really important. I urge members in this Chamber as well as the general public that if they have any evidence of the allegations of violence and of corruption that have been bandied around this House, and of the accusations loosely made against different people in Serco and people across the prison estate, to bring it forward. Bring it forward to the chief inspectorate, bring it forward to the investigators who are currently going through all the issues that are being bandied around in society, because what we need is a thorough review and investigation of the facts, we need a report that will look into these matters, and then we need to sensibly make decisions that affect not just Serco but the prison estate right across this country.

I just want to touch on the estimates in terms of what we are doing in corrections and how we are doing in corrections. The reoffending rate since 2011 has come down 9 percent—just over 9 percent—so it is currently just over 27 percent. I was in Australia recently for the Ministers’ conference, and when you look at reoffending rates in Australia, you see that for New South Wales it is over 42 percent—over 42 percent—so that is 50 percent more than in New Zealand. In Queensland it is in the high 30s—high 30s.

So when we look at our system and how we are doing compared with our Australian neighbours—who are the most important neighbours we have, the most important partners, with a jurisprudential system that is very similar to our own—we are actually doing far better in terms of reoffending and we are doing far better in terms of rehabilitation. It is one of the reasons why the South Australian Minister visited me last week and asked what we were doing around rehabilitation and what we were doing around reintegration, because they want to know what we are doing that we are doing well.

So although some members will bash the corrections system, there is actually a lot that is going on in our system that is really good. There is a lot that we are doing with Māori around tikanga Māori in our prisons to get Māori men, particularly, connected with their culture, connected with their whānau, back into society, and doing well again.

There is so much in our system around employment: a goal of every prison in this country is to be a working prison by 2017. Why is that important? It is because we know that jobs reduce dependency on welfare, we know that jobs reduce hardship, and we also know that jobs reduce reoffending rates. Jobs keep people out in our communities; enable them to look after, feed, and house their families, their whānau; and enable them to be better citizens in this country. That is why we are going for a full complement of working prisons across the estate—that is, both within Serco and within the public prisons.

We are also increasing numeracy and literacy in our prisons with programmes. We know that two-thirds of those men, predominantly, who turn up to our prisons cannot read or write. They are functionally illiterate and that is why we have signed a memorandum of understanding with the Tertiary Education Commission and we are now running programmes, numeracy and literacy programmes, to get these men back learning, growing, and in jobs.

Finally, I just want to salute the 8,000 men and women in both private and public prisons who are out there every day making this corrections system the best that it can be.