Annual Review Debate — Justice Sector

It is an absolute pleasure to lead off the debate in respect of appropriations for the 2015-16 year in the justice space. I am exceptionally proud because, of course, we are known as the law and order party. We have a record that is exceptional in the law and order and justice space. We are visionary in respect of breaking down the silos of government to look at justice across all Government departments, to make sure we are focused on holding offenders to account, to make sure that we understand and invest in people to eliminate the drivers of crime in a social investment space, and, of course, to focus on rehabilitation.

Most importantly, we are a party that is focused on putting the victim at the centre of offending—at the heart of that offending—and making sure that victims are supported and that they feel that justice has been done in that space.

We can celebrate the fact that we are the fourth-safest country in the OECD. We do want to be No.1, and to be No.1 we need to now start really tackling the “sharp end of the wedge” crimes, such as family violence. That is where I have to acknowledge our fantastic Minister, the Minister of Justice, the Hon Amy Adams, for spearheading a portfolio of work that is quite revolutionary in this space. We acknowledge that changing the laws is not going to, in itself, get on top of the 110,000 call-outs that occurred last year in the family violence space, but we acknowledge that law change will be a platform that we can springboard off, again to hold perpetrators to account and to put victims at the centre of that offending, to support them and their families, to make them feel safe, to help them feel safe, and to make sure that behaviours are changed so that these families can lead more productive and healthy lifestyles moving forward.

I know that the Minister will talk more about family violence in the legal overhaul that she will spearhead, but some of those reforms, generally speaking, will be in respect of making protection orders more accessible and more tailored to families for their specific circumstances, and also to look at further developing property orders to make sure that victims and survivors of domestic abuse are able to stay in the family home so that they feel safe in their environment and they are not the ones who are punished from being victimised, and also, though, to connect those perpetrators and offenders with the right supports that they need in the community to make sure that they start to develop healthy behaviours moving forward. So I think that these are fantastic reforms that the Hon Amy Adams is spearheading, and, like I say, she will touch on them further.

But it is not only about legal reform; it is also about integrating other Government departments, including the Police. The police are often the first people who are on the scene when these horrific incidents occur. We are giving them the tools to help them better respond, but, also, one of my favourites in the prevention space is of course the police disclosure scheme. The police disclosure scheme is a new scheme that allows the police to disclose to a partner the potential danger of their existing partner if they have a criminal history.

This scheme has now been used 158 times since it was launched in December 2015, and the police have approved 117 disclosure requests. That empowers people who are in a relationship with somebody who has a past history to make decisions that are best for them, as to whether to move out of the family home or to stop seeing their partner, or whatever it is, to seek the help that they need and, again, put in place some measures to make sure that they are safe. So this is a Government that is breaking down silos and making a difference.

I would like to talk about the New Zealand Police and the review we did of the New Zealand Police. That last speaker, Sarah Dowie, said that the National Government is the law and order party and that it is visionary for New Zealand. Well, the New Zealand Police review actually put that to bed, because that is not true in any way, shape, or form. In fact, what we saw is an organisation bereft of the funding needed to really make a difference in our community.

What we heard from the commissioner—and I think he must have heard me incorrectly when I did ask him how many police he asked the Minister for, because he said he asked the Minister for 880. He did not. Actually, Police asked this Government for 1,165 more police. The interesting thing about that is that the paper the Hon Judith Collins took to Cabinet actually also asked for 1,165 more police. That was the number of sworn officers the commissioner originally said he needed to get on top of crime. That was the number he said he needed to get on top of crime, and he was given 880.

What is worse is that the budget he was given was $96 million less than Police said it would need for 820 more police. So, yet again, we are seeing a Government that is not listening to Police and is not listening to our communities. I am really worried that it is going to underfund.

Let us take a step back. The Minister signed off a document in May that said there would be no more police for at least 4 more years. Then what happened is that Andrew Little and Jacinda Ardern, but mainly Andrew Little, showed some leadership. Andrew Little showed that he was listening to the people of New Zealand. Andrew came out and said “We’ve heard. We’re going to give you 1,000 more police over 3 years.”—1,000 more police over 3 years. And, lo and behold, the National Government followed and said: “We’ll give you 880 over 4 years.” Andrew showed leadership, and National followed.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): Order! The member has been here for some time. He knows how to name members. You do not do it by first names.

Mr Little, the leader of the—

💬 Jono Naylor: Show respect for your leader.

I have immense respect for Andrew Little.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): Order! Who was the member then who commented on my ruling? Did someone comment on my ruling?

💬 Jono Naylor: No, I interjected on his comment.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): The comments that were made before I ruled?

💬 Jono Naylor: I guess so.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): Can I just say to members that having assistance—it is a bit like refereeing. It is not very helpful. Mr Naylor, you are warned not to help me again, please.

All I want to just outline here is that, in fact, crime is increasing. We were told by Police that there was “a small increase in total crime rates since 2015.” In fact, the statistics show that burglaries increased by 10,288. That is an increase of nearly 200 burglaries a week.

The former Minister of Police over there, the Hon Judith Collins, she understood that. She knew what was needed. That Minister took a paper to Cabinet that said we need 1,165 more police. At some point—and I am not too sure why—she was overruled and the Government came out with 880 more police. It is simply not good enough. The reason I say that is that crime is actually out of control and our communities expect us, as parliamentarians, to do something about that and to address that. There is absolutely no evidence that the Government over there has heard (a) what the police are saying, and (b) what the community is saying.

There are a couple of other interesting points that need to be made with regard to this report. First of all, we heard that 23 shopfronts or kiosks have been closed due to health and safety concerns. They were done well over 14 months ago. It does not take 14 months to address health and safety concerns for community-based kiosks. If there is one thing I have learnt in this portfolio it is that community policing must be at the heart of safe, healthy communities. If there is one thing I can tell this Committee it is that Labour will instigate a policy that takes us back to the principle of community policing. The overall police strategy is about prevention first—I completely buy into that. I think it is the right strategy, but until we get community policing working, it will not be able to be delivered. Thank you.

It is a pleasure to take a call in this justice-themed section of the debate on the Appropriation (2015/16 Confirmation and Validation) Bill. I want to, obviously, address my comments as both the justice and courts Minister but also the Minister who leads the wider justice sector. I want to pick up on the comments that the chair of the Justice and Electoral Committee, Sarah Dowie, made in her contribution, where she highlighted the success of the sector in the time we have been in Government. It is working very much as a sector and we are no longer looking at these as individual stand-alone portfolios, but looking quite comprehensively right across the justice sector, and, actually even more so, increasingly right across the social sector and understanding the interactions between them.

While my contribution will focus on that part of our work, I also want to almost beg a little bit of indulgence and look at it through the lens of one of my other portfolios, which is around social investment. I actually think that when you look at the work that the justice sector has done, which we have seen reflected in the various financial reports that we are debating in this bill, you see an excellent example of agencies tilting towards and pivoting towards taking that social investment approach. Absolutely, they are working as a sector. They are no longer devising their work programmes along agency lines with those strict vertical silos that have for so long frustrated the public around the way the Government works; they are very much focusing on early intervention. They understand that it is not enough for them to simply react to what is happening, react to the crime in society, react by processing them through the courts, and react to the prisoners who turn up in our corrections system. They are very much—and most of the work programmes of those agencies are—thinking about and working out how we can better understand the people who are ending up in the system, and how actually, as a system, we could have intervened sooner and more effectively to both reduce the level and severity of the offending, and to actually stop them offending at all.

I think that really has been the story of the work in the sector over the year. We are seeing a lot more better-targeted interventions. That really comes about through a far greater analysis and understanding of the customs we see through the system, and understanding that there is not a one-size-fits-all approach. The justice sector has been one of the leading sectors across Government at doing what we call the investment approach—understanding its population, understanding the types of stories that are coming through, being able to segment its analysis and its response down to some very, very granular levels of interaction, and ensuring that our responses are very targeted to those particular understandings. What all that means is that we have a much more effective way of intervening and working with people who might otherwise end up in the criminal justice system, and the best chance of working with those who are in the criminal justice system to turn that around.

I did want to just reflect on and commend the work of my fellow Ministers in the sector, but also the chairs of the two select committees, Sarah Dowie and Kanwaljit Singh Bakshi. I congratulate Mr Bakshi on his appointment as parliamentary private secretary—for his work in Police and his strong interest in this area.

We are seeing quite an interesting programme of work that supports that investment-approach lens that I have been talking about. It will not be any surprise to this Committee that one area that I am very proud of, and I think absolutely demonstrates this approach, is the work around family violence. Because if you want to look at an area where, as a society and as a House and as a system, we can intervene far better, more effectively, and much earlier to turn around not only criminal justice outcomes but actually whole-of-system outcomes, it is in this area. We know that children growing up in households where there is violence are five times more likely to commit suicide and have a significantly higher chance of not getting NCEA. It is the highest—by a long shot; the single highest—predictor of going on to then become both offenders and victims of family violence. So it is working far better at those early signs of violence in the home—long before they get to court, actually. If we wait until they are in court to get help, we have left it too long.

So the whole package of reforms is now in a bill in front of a select committee for consideration, and we are having a family violence summit in the next month to continue discussing with the wider community the response programme. It is exactly that: it is pivoting the whole of the justice system, alongside their colleagues in the social system, to working in a much more citizen-centric way to better address and better target family violence, and respond much, much more quickly.

In that respect, in my closing seconds, I do just want to particularly comment on the work of the Integrated Safety Response pilot in Christchurch and the Waikato. In the 9 months that has been operating, we have seen 24,000 people helped through that programme. I can tell this Committee that the feedback we get—we never pretend that we have a perfect solution and it will magic it away—that resonates most with me is that the victims who have been in contact with the system, the providers, have said that we can never go back. This system has shown us that this is the only way to be working. It is the way to make progress, and I think it very well demonstrates the system-wide early intervention approach of the sector.

The member for Invercargill, who first spoke in this debate, Sarah Dowie, described this Government’s performance in the justice sector as “exceptional”. I would actually agree with that. It has been exceptional, particularly when I look at the annual review of the Department of Corrections—it is exceptionally poor. It is unprecedented, in fact, to the extent that we have seen an incredible increase in the number of inmates being kept in our prisons, and that is recorded in the review. We are keeping more people in prison for longer, without any increase in public safety and despite a reduction in the crime rate overall. There are more people being held on parole—something like 28 to 30 percent more—largely due to policy change, not due to any risk profile or any other defensible reasons. There are more inmates failing to get parole; again, not because of the level of risk they present to the community but simply because of process failures within Corrections. So I would agree that it has been an exceptional performance by this Government, and it is an exceptionally poor performance. We need to do a great deal better.

We are spending a great deal more money. The operating revenue for Corrections in the previous year was up some 5.5 percent. Despite that, it still did not manage to meet its budget; there was an overspend. This is unsustainable. The Prime Minister knows it is unsustainable. He said as much some 4 or 5 years ago. Nothing has changed. We do need to do a great deal better. The prison muster is currently in excess of 10,000. We are told, I think in an attempt to comfort us, by the chief executive officer (CEO) of Corrections that he thinks it will level off somewhere around 11,000 inmates in the next 8 or 9 years. He cannot tell us when the levelling off might occur. I think it would be a disgrace for this country if, in fact, our prison population did level off at 10,000 or something above that. We should be targeting something in the range of 3,000 to 4,000 as an acceptable—if that is the right word—number of inmates in our prisons. It certainly is unacceptable that we should accept in excess of 10,000 people in our prisons.

The response of this Government to this unprecedented rise has not been to interrogate its own policy or the practice in our prisons or the failure of rehabilitation and reintegration programmes; it is simply launching into a new bout of prison expansion—expansion of capacity. We heard from the CEO that it expects within the next 4 years to be able to accommodate another 1,945 inmates in our prisons. This was presented as though it is some sort of success. Some of that is new capacity, some of it is what he called “latent potential”, which I think means reopening old units, old prisons, that were closed for very good humanitarian and operational reasons. This is not an acceptable response: spending more money, less public safety, more waste of people’s time and effort in our prisons. It is not a good look for this Government.

We know that the more people you have in a jail—particularly when they are double-bunked—the more people you have in a facility not designed for the number of inmates, you get higher levels of stress, higher levels of violence. We asked the CEO of Corrections directly whether the increased tension and stress of more people in a space beyond the design capacity was leading to more violent outbreaks, and he certainly agreed that that was one reason why we are seeing more incidents of violence in our prisons. Again, this is an unacceptable response. We can do a great deal better and, in fact, we will do a great deal better.

I do think, to be fair, that a change in culture is called for, and that is across not only the Corrections department but nationally, as a country. We need a change of culture in the way we think and behave in terms of crime and punishment in our prisons. We need a cross-party agreement. We need, over time, to stop using law and order and, particularly, Corrections as a political football. We have been doing that for 20 or 30 years, and we are failing to get good results. We are actually getting worse outcomes. We could go back as far as 1989 to the Roper report and look at some of the recommendations in that report. We do need a cross-party commitment to actually address the problems in our prisons in a modern way, in a positive way, with a view to dramatically reducing the social and economic cost of our prisons. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr Chair, for the opportunity to participate in this debate. First of all, I would like to congratulate the leadership of Ministers the Hon Amy Adams and the Hon Paula Bennett in this justice sector. As has been mentioned, it is not just policing or corrections but we need to look into the wider picture in the justice as well as the social sector, where we can address the issues that have been raised. I would like to also acknowledge the Hon Judith Collins for her leadership as the Minister of Police in the past.

The Government when it came into power in 2008 inducted 600 more front-line police officers who helped us to improve the law and order situation drastically. That had been our main issue at that time and that is why we are today the fourth-safest country in the world, and we will continue to work upon it. That was the past. In the future—the Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister have earlier this year announced that we will be having an additional 1,125 police officers to help the situation. It is very important we should understand that the numbers will help us to improve the law and order situation but it is the wider spectrum—as the Minister mentioned—the social angle, that also has to be looked into, and we hope that this will help us.

We also rolled out new technology. New tools were provided to the police who told us that there were equivalent to about 350 more police officers on the street because of the technology. They did not have to go back to the police station to report what they had done. They are using technology—smartphones—to record crime, and that is helping. This is what we are doing, and we have also provided them with Taser guns. They are in lock-up and they are available; if the situation requires, then they can use them.

The additional half a billion dollars that was allocated to the justice sector earlier this year will help us to provide more money to Justice, Corrections, and Police so that they can help to increase the safety of people in their homes, in their communities, and at their businesses. Mr Nash mentioned that we have closed down a few police stations, or community police stations, but I can assure him that in the days to come we are helping 20 more police stations to be 24/7 so that they can provide the safety that people are looking for.

We have also provided an additional 20 ethnic officers. It is very important to understand that, with the changing demographic of New Zealand today, we need more and more ethnic officers who can understand the culture, who can talk in the language they speak, so that they can have the benefit of their safety and their perspective.

We are also going to launch a non-emergency number, which will help people to take pressure off the 111 number. The non-emergency calls can be attended by this new number, which can connect them to the police stations that are not 24/7.

We are also working on family violence. We have made a lot of changes in the past so that family violence can be addressed and we can help the families to feel safe.

Interest in getting recruited in the police has increased and more than 1,351 applications were received earlier this year.

I would also like to touch upon the Corrections part, which is also important, because most of our prisons have been turned into working prisons so that we can provide training to the inmates so that when they come out into society they have got some skills with which they can help themselves and their families to live a life with mana and they can be people with self-respect. In 2015 and 2016 a total of 176—

I agree with the Prime Minister: prisons are a fiscal and moral failure. They are a fiscal failure because we spend close to $100,000 a year to lock people up when we do not spend a fraction of that to keep people out of prisons. I agree with David Clendon as well, when he said that the culture of prisons needs to change.

People will be saying: “Well, what do you mean by ‘The culture of prisons needs to change.’?”. Last week I spent a good couple of hours with People at Risk Solutions (PARS) in Auckland, and one of their workers said to me: “Kelvin, of all the people who walk out of prison with a mental health issue, in my professional estimation 40 percent of those mental health issues actually started in prison.” This is not me just spouting something off; this is what I have heard from someone who works at the coalface: 40 percent of people who walk out of prison with a mental health issue actually had that mental health issue start in prison. That is an indictment of the system that we have.

Not only that, but we have 62 percent of prisoners come into prison who already have a mental health issue, and we do very little to actually address that. That needs to change. Part of the reason, probably, that they commit crime is because of all the stuff that is going on in their head, which they need to have addressed before they even get to prison. We need to start working with the education system, the health system, and the justice system to prevent those people coming in and not getting their mental health issues addressed.

Our prison population grew in the last 2 years by 1,500 people. The chief executive of Corrections says that he believes our prison population will level off at about 11,000 in 8 years. Well, if the prison population has grown by 1,500 in the last 2 years, and we keep that rate of growth up, in 8 years we are actually going to have 6,000 more people in prison. We will not have 11,000; we are going to have 16,000 at least, because the prison population in December of last year hit 10,000 for the first time ever.

Prisons do not work. The more we build prisons, then the more people we throw in prisons, and then the more failure we create. Prisoners go out when their sentence is finally over. They do not get rehabilitated; they, in fact, go out, and the vast majority end up reoffending within a couple of years, which creates more victims in New Zealand. It is just a self-perpetuating cycle that we are creating here. We are not making New Zealand a safer country. We are not having fewer victims, even though there is actually less crime, and that is the really strange thing about our whole justice system.

Another really interesting point that the PARS person said to me was: “Kelvin, stop talking about rehabilitation.” The reality is that we assume, with rehabilitation, that many of the prisoners were actually habilitated at some stage in their past—that they grew up in families like mine who were loving and caring and supportive, and that they grew up with a set of values. The reality is that many of them have never been habilitated in the first place, and when they get into prison we need to actually start from scratch, teaching them the basic things that many of us take for granted. Prisons are a fiscal and moral failure. We cannot keep throwing in people at the number we are and at the speed we are and not do much to help them.

Domestic violence, in the annual review, makes up a lot of the increase in prison population, yet what are we doing for people who commit domestic or family violence? Do we actually engage the family in their rehabilitation, or habilitation? If dad is in there because he has beaten up mum and the kids, are the other family members actually brought in and is there some sort of healing done between dad and the family? And if he says “My offending is a result of my violent upbringing.”, do we bring in grandad and grandma as well, and have this whole whānau / whole family healing to address the issue? No. Basically, they go into prison and their courses are totally separate from the reality of their lives when they go back out. They have this teaching and training, but there is actually a disconnect between their offending and the people they offended against, if they are in there for domestic and family violence situations. That sort of thing needs to be looked at. We need to start looking at solutions to actually address the problem.

I do want to agree with the member who spoke before me, Kelvin Davis, on one matter, and it is that, unfortunately, the people who come into the corrections system come with some challenges. One of them is mental health challenges—61 percent of offenders who come into the prison system have had a mental health issue in the 12 months that have preceded. That is why we are looking at cross-sector work with the Ministry of Health to focus very clearly on mental health so that we are in a position to reduce the number coming into the justice sector, but then there is also a significant amount of work that Corrections is doing to support those who are there.

The point that I do very deliberately want to disagree with the previous member on is the comment—it is twofold, actually. One is the fact that when people are incarcerated, they are not in our communities, and, therefore, those who are committing violent and sexual crimes are behind bars. That makes our communities safer. It is quite simple.

In terms of the rising number of those who are in prison, there are a couple of key factors. One is that our police system is far more successful at getting successful convictions. Of those who are convicted, the sentences—and they are not sentences that Corrections imposes. They are sentences imposed by the courts and by the judges. They are imposing longer sentences in recognition that some of those crimes are significantly more violent and a large number of them are also sexual violence. So they are being incarcerated for longer periods of time.

The third part of it is also around the ability for them to get early releases. Again, those are decisions that are made by the Parole Board based on the level of risk that an offender may pose to our community. If the Parole Board determines that that person is unsafe to be in the community, that is the decision it makes. That is the decision it makes.

So the point the member before me made was that our communities are not safer because we have more people in prison. Well, I am sorry, but you do not actually know your facts, because if someone is behind bars, they cannot commit a crime in our communities. So, then, for those who are in the communities, absolutely there is a responsibility to enable them to be in a better position when they come out. In terms of reoffending, it is a 4.4 percent reduction that our Government has achieved. There are 38,000 fewer victims. That is success—38,000 fewer victims. Have we got more to do? Absolutely, but 38,000 fewer victims is, I think, a success for the work that this Government has done.

I want to take a moment because I want to acknowledge the incredible work that corrections staff do. They do work with some of the most challenged and challenging New Zealanders, and absolutely they have caused 38,000 fewer victims, with the concentrated work that they have done with offenders.

I want to go through some of those areas, because, again, one of the challenges with the offenders whom we have in prison is that they have a very low level of literacy and numeracy. Sixty percent do not have an NCEA level 1—equivalent education. So I want to acknowledge the work of our hard-working volunteers in the corrections organisations—organisations like the Howard League, which really supports prisoners in basic literacy and numeracy programmes—but then, what we do from there is taking them to participate in trade training. There is a really great collaboration between tertiary education providers, and, also, we are seeing more and more employers embracing the opportunity to not only employ offenders when they come out of prison but actually employ them while they are behind the wire. That is made possible by our work-to-release programmes, because our Government absolutely believes that while we have people inside the care of the corrections system, we want to enable them to have different choices, different pathways when they come out.

So whether it is education, whether it is mental health, whether it is skills for work, or whether it is work experience—these are all critically important things that the Corrections team and the wider justice sector are focusing on to ensure that those people have a better opportunity. But you are kidding yourselves if you think it is not about keeping our public safe.

It is a pleasure to rise on behalf of New Zealand First to speak to this appropriations debate. Corrections set itself a target of reducing reoffending by 25 percent by 2017 some years ago. We are in the middle of 2017 now, but what Corrections has said was that it identified that target as unachievable, so what it did was remove the target itself. There are no measurements, so there are no failures. And that is the answer to the failures by this Government.

Some years ago, when it set up Rehabilitation and Reintegration Services—in short, it is known as RRS—millions were pumped into it. There was a lot of fanfare that it started with. What it actually did was to work out earlier what the sentencing planning process was, which was carried out by custodial officers, sometimes in uniform, who had trained to plan the sentence of a prisoner according to their rehabilitative needs. Those needs depended, correspondingly, on the type of offences they were involved in, so that system worked. Like everything else, it was not perfect but it did work, and the cost to Corrections was minimal.

But now, what it has done is it has started this new reintegration and rehabilitation service, and some of those sentence planners—those who were the ex—corrections officers and senior corrections officers, who were trained to do the job—were taken in as case managers and senior case managers, but those numbers were not enough because the service was bigger and it was aimed at achieving higher targets. So what Corrections did was import officers and case managers from overseas, from the UK, from South Africa, and from other countries. Those case managers and managers had no idea about what tikanga Māori was all about, they had no idea how our prisons worked, and they had no idea about the culture of those prisoners. However, they were brought into this flash new service, and they were promoted over New Zealanders who were trained to do the job. They were promoted over those New Zealanders who had done the job in the past. Those New Zealanders knew what they were doing, but these foreign imports were brought in and promoted over those hard-working New Zealanders. So what was the result? The result was that the service failed, and failed miserably at that.

This importation of case managers was bitterly resented by New Zealanders who were capable of doing the job. It was resented by those New Zealanders because there was evidence that ex-butchers and ex-bricklayers were appointed as managers over the top of them. So that was bound to be a failure, and it was a failure indeed. And then what was the result? The result was that the target achieved was 4 percent—4 percent—as against the 25 percent advertised. So RRS, again, was a disaster. Millions of taxpayers’ dollars were spent and wasted, and then the Government had to resort to the idea of just removing the targets so that nobody knows what the measurement is, nobody knows whether they are a success because there are no criteria. There are no criteria for the success of RRS and Corrections as a whole.

So it is concerning that a large number of payouts were given to staff who were victims of bullying and sexual harassment. What happened was that when these foreigners were brought in as managers, they had no idea about our work culture and there had been complaints of bullying and sexual harassment against those managers. But what did Corrections do? It paid out the victims, and the alleged perpetrators kept their jobs. This is what has happened, Minister Upston—not on your watch, but on your predecessor’s watch. So please check on that.

Now, as if that was not enough, there was another disaster: Serco. The Government brought in Serco to manage the Mt Eden Corrections Facility, which was being managed by the Corrections staff themselves. But no, this profit-making foreign corporate was given that contract for $33 million per year, approximately. And then what happened? Kelvin Davis just mentioned that jails have been a fiscal failure and a moral failure. Over there it was an operational failure, also. There were escapes from that prison. There were fight clubs. There was contraband being imported into the prison. There were mobile phones in the prison. That became a massive operational failure.

So what does the Government do now? After the inquiry was done, the Government took back the Corrections management very reluctantly. So when it took back the Corrections management, it was a slap in the face for Corrections. However, officers from all over the country were brought in to help Serco run in the interim period. Millions were spent on that. Corrections was paid its fees, plus, on top of that, there was overtime paid to the Corrections staff, there were travel allowances, and there were other expenses that were not necessary at all. So that became another disaster.

So now coming to the Police—I would say our most overworked and understaffed and under-resourced public service is the Police. The Police admitted to closing down 30 police stations in the last 3 years throughout the country; however, it informed the Law and Order Committee that 15 new police stations have opened, which automatically means that New Zealanders are in deficit of 15 police stations. We asked the question as to how it has used the resources from the 15 police stations that were closed down. No answer. It said “We don’t measure that.” How will those resources that would have otherwise been used by those 15 police stations be spread out throughout the country? No answer.

Other than that, there has been an increase in population at the rate of approximately 46,000 people per year, only in Auckland. With the population there comes crime and there comes the need for extra essential services, the police being one of the most crucial of those. But what is the increase in numbers in terms of police on the streets? Just eight—an increase of eight policemen and women for an increase of 46,000 per year. That, clearly, is not enough.

So this increase in numbers and this now-promised increase in police numbers over the next 4 years is a very lethargic response to a problem that was imminent anyway. We have been raising our concerns about police numbers and rising crime for the last 3 years. However, we were always told that the law and order situation is under control, that we are performing better than we used to, and that it is not so serious. But the Government does not bother to go and ask those dairy owners who have been robbed and who have been assaulted and who are being killed, or their families.

It is so serious that the shop owners, particularly the liquor store owners, are scared to go to work. It is a very, very alarming situation, and the earlier this Government gets up, the earlier this Government rises to the occasion, the better it will be.

When we come to the annual reviews time in Parliament, it is always an interesting time. We get to hear from various different Government departments that come in and talk to us, and we get a better feel for what is going on. Certainly in the Justice and Electoral Committee, which I am a part of, we have had a wide variety of people come and talk to us.

In terms of the reports that we have sent back to the House—and I am sure the Attorney-General will be pleased to see some of these—from, for example, the Parliamentary Counsel Office and the Law Commission, it is a case of no news is good news. They had probably the shortest reports to the House that I have ever seen, actually saying that there is, in fact, nothing to report back to the House. However, with other organisations—for example, the Ministry of Justice—lots of news is also good news. It has been great to see so many impressive things that have been happening right across that whole area, and I just want to touch on a few of those today.

There has been a lot of innovative work that has been going on. For example, there was the alcohol and other drug treatment court. Our committee actually made a visit to the alcohol and other drug treatment court in Auckland. Unfortunately, I could not be there, but the feedback that I got from my fellow committee members was that this innovative piece of work is actually seeing some great results, whereby people can actually go and do alcohol and drug treatment programmes prior to sentencing. That can have an impact on the sentence they receive, particularly when alcohol and drugs have very much been a driver as a part of their offending. I think it is a really positive step forward. It is just one of the ways that we are seeing that innovation creep in.

Also, in that line, in the Rangatahi Courts and the Pasifika Courts, we are seeing young people being able to sort of have their issues addressed—not any more leniently, but in a way that is more culturally appropriate, which then delivers better outcomes for those young people as they progress through the justice system. In fact, both of those—the Rangatahi and Pasifika Courts—have had international acclaim and have received international awards. I think that is something that is good for us to stop and pause on and to acknowledge—that, actually, our justice system is moving forward. As we went through the whole judicature modernisation process—it is one thing to bring it up to speed, but we are also seeing this innovation that is going forward, delivering very good results for our community and also, particularly, for those younger offenders who are needing to break their way out of, I guess, a bad circle that they are involved with in terms of their behaviours.

There has been a significant legislative programme over the last while that has kept the Justice and Electoral Committee very busy, and it has been great to be a part of a hard-working and collegial committee. We have seen wide-ranging legislation come through in this area—for example, harmful digital communications legislation, whereby it is now an offence to send messages and post material online that deliberately causes serious emotional distress. It is now an offence. There is going to be a new offence about inciting people to commit suicide. It is great to see that we are starting to develop and get our laws into the 21st century, reflecting that, actually, harm can be put on somebody not just through physical harm but actually through our social media way in which we communicate. That too has been great for us to see, as we have reviewed the Ministry of Justice—to see the work that it is doing in this space.

Finally, I just want to touch on the extensive work that the Ministry of Justice has been doing in trying to reduce the very high levels of domestic violence that we have in New Zealand. The new legislation, which has just recently come before us—and I do want to make sure I get the name of it correct; it is the Family and Whānau Violence Legislation Bill—is introducing some new offences. It is an overhaul of the Domestic Violence Act, and I am really looking forward, in 12 months’ time—though I will not necessarily be there on the Justice and Electoral Committee—to hearing about what the impact of this new legislation is going to bring in. I am sure it is going to be equally successful, and I think that if we can continue, obviously, with a great Minister in charge of this area, who will be bringing these changes into effect, we will see greater inroads being made around domestic violence and around harm to others. I am sure we would all agree that that is a positive thing for New Zealand.

Tēnā koe, Mr Chair. As a member of the Justice and Electoral Committee, with my colleague Jacinda Ardern, what I would like to take the opportunity to do is to highlight the outputs of this justice system over the last year.

In December 2016 our prison population hit 10,000. Is that congratulations to the Government? I do not think so. That is an extra 1,500 prisoners in the last 2 years. Why are our prisons exploding? And why have our prisons forced the Government to come out and say it will invest in a billion-dollar, 1,800-person new prison? Hopefully, it is not the Government’s form of social investment, because if that is what social investment looks like for our country, then we are in serious trouble.

We have over 20,000 people going through our prisons each year, and about 75 percent of the 1,500 increase over the last 2 years are remand prisoners. The other 375 new prisoners are there because of violence issues and also breaching non-violence orders. For people who do not think we have a family violence issue in our country, those statistics speak for themselves.

What I am really interested in are the people who end up in our prison system. What we do know is that 91 percent of people who go through our prison system end up with a drug, alcohol, or mental health issue. When they enter the prison system—and my colleague Kelvin Davis touched on this—61 percent of them have drug, alcohol, or mental health issues. So what our prison system is actually doing is teaching them to be drug addicts, become alcohol addicted, and also to develop mental health issues.

We have got to do something serious about people going into prison. We have got to prevent them going into prison in the first place. But going into prison should not mean that the outcome of that, if you are Māori—and this is where it gets really interesting, because 51 percent of the male prisoners are Māori, and 57 percent of the female prisoners are Māori, and if you are Māori, 80 percent of you within 5 years will be back in prison again. So that is the biggest challenge.

I want to highlight the Waitangi Tribunal case that Tom Hemopō took, on behalf of Māori. The finding of that particular Waitangi Tribunal case was that urgent action is needed to address the failure of the system. Māori going into prison actually should be a sign of the system supporting them to never go back again. But what it does do, as I said earlier, is create more drug addicts, more alcohol-addicted people, more people with mental health issues, and it actually keeps them in the system. That is an absolute failure, and we must do something about it.

The other highlight I want to make is The Backbone Collective, which was formed by Ruth Herbert, who also formed this group with two others, Deborah MacKenzie and Tania Domett. Now, what are they there to do? They are there for victims of domestic violence and abuse. They are there to support women and children, and they are an independent watchdog of the system. What have they said of the system? They have said that the system actually revictimises women who are going through the court system. They have said that the engagement with police and the process with Government departments actually does not help them; it hinders their experience of family violence. I know that they have put out a challenge—a wero—to the Minister of Justice. They have 160 questions that they want answered, and I hope that the Minister is going to answer those questions really quickly, because, from The Backbone Collective’s perspective, our justice system is failing our women and our children who are suffering from family violence in our country.

As a member of the Justice and Electoral Committee, we had an opportunity to go to Australia earlier this year. We were the chosen select committee. I want to highlight two particular issues and visits that we made. The first was to White Ribbon Australia, which, obviously, focuses on reducing family violence. What White Ribbon highlighted to me—and we also visited the Canberra office of family violence that is attached to the Prime Minister’s office. And what that office said to us—Mr Chair, I am going to ask for another call; I will do so now; [Bell rung]—was that when women experience family violence, they need support immediately. What type of support do they need? They need a home, they need adequate income, they need to be diagnosed, and they need wraparound support. Guess why? So that they can keep children with their parents.

One of the biggest issues that I think we are having at the moment is that if women who are experiencing family violence go into the system and Child, Youth and Family (CYF) is involved, guess what we are doing? We are taking their children from them. If that is what the justice system is doing and if that is what the justice system thinks is the solution, then, again, I think that is an indictment on this Government’s social investment strategy.

The other issue that I want to highlight is that while we were in Australia we got to speak with Justice McClellan. Justice McClellan is the chair of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. He has been chairing this process now for 5 years. What did he tell us? Actually, he told us that over 66,000 children have been sexually abused in institutions either run by the Government—that is 40 percent of those who were sexually abused, but 60 percent of the abuse actually happened in Church institutions. What have they committed to? They have committed to providing victims of sexual abuse with counselling and support for the rest of their lives. What they are talking about in Australia is trauma. The trauma caused by suffering family violence, sexual abuse, and other forms of abuse that actually end up following you for the rest of your life.

Why is that relevant? I went to an event that the National Council of Women hosted about a month ago. It was titled Towards a Gender Equal New Zealand. One of the people there, Louise Nicholas, talked about going to a prison and talking to 21 women in that prison. They were all preparing to leave and of those women 19 of them had been sexually abused as children. This issue of sexual abuse is a huge issue. On Thursday we will hear from Grant C West, who is bringing a petition to this Parliament to call for a royal commission on institutional responses to child sexual abuse.

If we do not think that that royal commission is relevant to the justice sector, then we are kidding ourselves. Based on what Louise Nicholas told me, most of the women in prison are there because they have been sexually abused as children. That abuse has never been validated. They have never been assessed. They have never been diagnosed. They have never got the support that they want. And how does that affect their lives? Well, obviously, it means they end up alcohol dependent, drug dependent, in prison, and with mental health issues. So if anyone wants to consider or ponder the relevance of an inquiry, then maybe they should look at the statistics starting to emerge in this particular sector that we are discussing today.

I quickly want to talk about the increases in aggravated robberies that have happened in New Zealand in the last year. That is a 10 percent increase nationally. That is 2,841 aggravated robberies. What has that resulted in? Actually, it has resulted in the formation of the Crime Prevention Group, and I want to do a little bit of an acknowledgment of their president Sunny Kaushal. I was at a hui, with other members of this Parliament, on Thursday looking at this issue specifically and how it relates to our Indian community, how it relates to our Chinese community, and what we are going to do about it. This is because people who are going about their lawful business should not have to be confronted with—unfortunately—young people, and also gangs of people, who are stealing specific commodities. Those commodities are cigarettes; those commodities are alcohol.

What we heard, actually, was a cry for help, and I am here to add to that cry for help. We need more police front-line staff serving our community. We need more support for Neighbourhood Support. So I have got a meeting with my local police and Neighbourhood Support because guess why? Neighbourhood Support is in our community, binding our community together, being vigilant together, and trying to stop the drivers of crime so that people can be protected when they are going about their daily business. And if this Government thinks that 800 new front-line police officers are enough, I think that it needs to do some recalculations. From my perspective, the justice sector is in disarray.

It is my pleasure to stand to speak to the Appropriation (2015/16 Confirmation and Validation) Bill here today. I am pleased to be taking this call as a member of the Justice and Electoral Committee and to contribute to this debate on behalf of the justice sector.

This Government has set itself four priorities, and one of those is to deliver Better Public Services—so building a safer New Zealand is, of course, an important part of that plan. As we have heard today, New Zealand is currently ranked fourth in the world for safety. We are not taking our foot off the pedal; we actually want New Zealand to be No. 1 in the world. So we are approaching that with a great deal of enthusiasm, and, as a result, we have been very active in the Justice and Electoral Committee working on many pieces of legislation.

One of those is the Integrated Safety Response (ISR) pilot, which is under way now. It is working with 24,000 people and building safety plans around them in an integrated way that brings together many organisations, agencies, and NGOs, because we understand that it is only when these agencies work together that we actually do a better job with these families in keeping them safer. The agencies that are working together in this pilot are the New Zealand Police, Child, Youth and Family, the Department of Corrections, the Ministry of Health, Māori services, and a specialist family violence NGO.

Another piece of work that the committee has been working on over the past year has been the historical homosexual convictions scheme. This has been a very difficult one emotionally for the committee to tackle. It also was difficult listening to the submissions of people involved in those historical convictions. The Government is going to be working on an expungement of those historical convictions, so that these people can actually move on. It is hoped that this will be introduced in 2018, when the essential laws have been passed.

Another major piece of work that has been undertaken in the past year has been the modernisation of 108-year-old legislation through the judicature modernisation legislation. A major part of that legislation has been the changes to the court systems, bringing them into the 21st century by using technology. A major part of that has been the audiovisual links that are now being rolled out. There are already 20 courthouses that have those links installed and are using that technology. Of course, this allows the participants in the court proceedings to appear via audiovisual link, rather than in person, and for prisoners on remand it means that they are also not required to be transported to the courts—it does not take up valuable resources in staff and vehicles. So this is a better, faster, cheaper, easier, and, of course, safer system. For example, it is estimated that the Hastings District Court now has the potential to hold more than 800 of these court appearances by audiovisual link—so those savings are clearly obvious.

One of the other issues that the Government has been working on very hard since the earthquakes in Canterbury has been the Christchurch Justice and Emergency Services Precinct—a $300 million project. It brings together all of the justice and emergency services into one precinct. There are 19 courts, encompassing the High Court, the District Court, the Family Court, the Youth Court, the Māori Land Court, the Environment Court, and, of course, other specialist jurisdictions. Beside these are the emergency services: fire, police, and the Order of St John, as well as civil defence and emergency management agencies. This is expected to be fully operational within the next few months. Indeed, I was talking to a potential staff member there yesterday who said the precinct is absolutely superb—it is groundbreaking in terms of the template that it will set for other facilities across the country.

This Government has been busy with the Safer Communities package, it has introduced an offenders levy, and it is also committed to much more policing: 880 more front-line police. So justice and community safety is hugely important to this Government, and we are continuing to invest.

Reports noted.

Māori, Other Populations and Cultural Sector