Clendon David: Corrections Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Clendon David: Corrections Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Sitting date: 13 February 2013. Volume:687;Page:7842. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
DAVID CLENDON (Green) 
: 
 It has been interesting listening to the debate thus far and I would certainly speak in support of many of the points that have been made by our Labour colleagues about the deficiencies in this bill the Corrections Amendment Bill and the overall direction in which it is going. The chair of our Law and Order Committee and I could say a very good chair too made the point that in line with her expectation—and it is true—the Greens have a principled objection to the notion of private ownership and management of prisons. We just do not see it as an appropriate thing for the State to delegate that responsibility. The State has a unique right to legally deprive people of their liberty. Our principled position is that we think the State ought to fulfil its obligation by performing those custodial functions. 
Jacqui Dean also made the comment that she thought the Greens and Labour could not get their heads around the fact that private management of prisons could be beneficial and in that she is actually quite wrong. We I think would agree that private management can be beneficial. The key question is to whom does the benefit accrue. It is very clear that the benefit accrues almost solely to the private operators to the private contractors. We see no benefit to the taxpayer. We see no benefit in terms of enhanced public safety. We certainly see very little benefit overall to the people working in the prison system and indeed the inmates who are contained within it. There is simply no evidence internationally. The evidence is that on balance we see backward steps. We see more cost over time. Serco’s performance—and I will happily say this outside because it is based on reported evidence—has been suboptimal in many ways not only in prisons in corrections but also in the health service. In the National Health Service in the UK for example there was some scandalous performance there. 
I reject the argument that we must privatise our prisons which this bill seeks to embed further simply to get some fresh thinking some innovative ideas. We do have a corrections department and I say this in the full awareness that there is some progressive and some good thinking within that department not least of all from the chief executive himself but overall I think it is fair to say by way of observation that the culture of that organisation is very very inward-looking it is very defensive and it is not actually conducive to generating or accepting new ideas. That has to change and it can change over time but it does not change simply by surrendering by saying that the public sector cannot be innovative and cannot create a good and positive prison environment that actually gives us good outcomes. 
I would suggest to the Minister of Corrections that rather than import ownership rather than import private managers of our prisons we temporarily export some of the best and brightest in our public sector send some of our senior officers on sabbaticals and give them time out from their day-to-day duties to go overseas to be exposed to the good ideas to engage in the debate and to bring back those ideas. This works in education it works in just about every imaginable field and it can and should work in corrections. We do not have to import private management. We can send our own people abroad to observe what works and what does not work and to bring things back trial them and look for good solutions. The Minister is right in that the corrections system has been moribund for a very long time. As I said it is inward-looking it is very defensive and we need to do better and I believe we can do better. I do acknowledge that some small steps have been made towards that but I absolutely reject the proposition that it is necessary to hand over the business to a private operator in order to achieve those better outcomes. 
I would like to say a few things about the clause concerning medical officers clause 8 of this bill. There was some doubt under the original drafting that there would be a minimum of one medical officer in each prison. The redrafted version we are told assures us that there must be at least one medical officer in each prison. The language—“a sufficient number of medical officers”—is a small improvement but it is something I think we will continue to monitor. We know that prisoners routinely have less good health than the general population. There is strong evidence that prisoners’ health can go backwards can get worse rather than better while they are in the care of the Department of Corrections. We hear anecdotally of instances which I hope are not widespread where access to medical help medical service is treated as a reward as a privilege rather than as an absolute right. These things we know are occurring and ought not to be. 
I do think that the argument that the Ombudsman presented in the very substantive and comprehensive assessment—the report—that the Ombudsman gave us last year advocating very strongly that the Department of Corrections the custodial department ought not to have charge of the delivery of health services is one we absolutely agree with. We think that the mind-set the culture of a custodial organisation is always going to compromise the open and appropriate delivery of health services. 
 It is to the benefit not only of inmates that they get a good health service; it is to the benefit of all of us. Ninety-nine percent of inmates will ultimately be released back into society. If they remain physically unwell—and we routinely hear of people coming from prison sentences often quite long sentences with very poor dental health with chronic untreated respiratory problems and with all sorts of illness that ought to have been and could have been dealt with better while they were serving their sentences—and come back into communities with ill health poor physical as well as often mental health untreated addictions and the like it is not helpful for any of us. 
It is a shame as I said last night in the earlier debate. The provisions in the bill we are debating tonight could have been an opportunity to fundamentally change the nature of the health service delivery in our prisons. It is unfortunate I think that there has been some movement around the margins some changes implemented but no substantive change. We do need structural changes in the corrections system. What we have now is not performing well. We are significantly below par in terms of our reoffending in terms of recidivism in terms of failure to reintegrate people back into society post release. We can do better. We need to do better. We spent $1.4 billion last year and that figure has been climbing year by year by year. We have to do better. It is our responsibility to the taxpayers and indeed to the people who are in the justice pipeline. 
I would like to mention the business of denying prisoners their minimum entitlement to exercise. Again the select committee did some good work and we did have a win there. The original drafting of the bill meant that prisoners could be denied their minimum entitlement of 1 hour on an open-ended basis—it could go on and on. The new draft of the bill limits it to 2 consecutive days. We still think that is too much primarily because the criteria include a reference to it not being practicable to provide the opportunity for a prisoner to get an hour’s exercise on a given day. In other words budgetary and resource constraints can deny a prisoner that minimum right. 
One hour out of 24—that is their entitlement and it can be denied them for 48 hours. What would it do for any of us to be confined in very small rooms in the back of a prison van in a holding cell at a court and then to go back to a cell in a prison—48 hours at a stretch without seeing daylight or getting fresh air? Even though as I dare suppose most of us are well-balanced individuals I think we would find ourselves seriously stressed by that. For an inmate who is already suffering stress including people not yet proven to be guilty of anything—because this applies to remand people as well—I think it is unacceptable that we should deny that very very minimal 1-hour per day entitlement to some exercise. I think that is simply not good enough. We should not be reducing what is already a very minimal entitlement. It is simply inhumane to keep people confined to that extent for 48-hour periods and then perhaps they have a day with 1 hour of exercise and then back to court they go for another couple of days or they are transferred to another prison—whatever the situation might be. 
There has been talk already about and reference made to the question of strip-searches and the extent to which the more intrusive form of strip-search will become the norm rather than our allowing for the less intrusive version. Often when one speaks in any detail on this people wrinkle their noses. It is not a pleasant business. The point has been made—it has been articulated already—that it is not desirable for inmates or for staff.