Rurawhe Adrian: Estimates Debate — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeRurawhe Adrian: Estimates Debate — In Committee[Sitting date: 11 August 2015. Volume:707;Page:5601. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]ADRIAN RURAWHE (Labour—Te Tai Hauāuru): 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 estimatesand 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 seeingonly the tip of the iceberg.