Mark Ron: Corrections Bill — Instruction to Committee In Committee Procedure 
Mark Ron: Corrections Bill — Instruction to Committee In Committee Procedure 
[Volume:617;Page:13036] 
RON MARK (NZ First) 
: 
 What a sick and sorry joke this part is! This part is a very sick joke. Members should look at it. I will take clause 200 which deals with the transition as an example. It states: “Monitors—(1) There must be appointed under the State Sector 1988 as many monitors as are required for the purposes of this Act.” Essentially this gives the Chief Executive of the Department of Corrections the power to assess and to monitor the management of a contract prison. For what? All of the evidence that the select committee saw and all of the debate tonight have pointed out one simple fact: all of the evidence that is available in every newspaper clipping from the past 4 years that one cares to go over suggests that if any wing of the corrections system is failing and needs monitoring it is the State side of the bill. It is not the private contractor. Indeed I suggest that the people who should be getting monitored on their track record to date are Mr Byers Mr McCarthy and everybody in the Department of Corrections including the Minister because the track record of the Auckland Central Remand Prison in terms of its operations its drug-testing regime the number of suicides the number of assaults on inmates and the number of assaults on prison officers shows quite clearly that it is outperforming the State-provided service. 
The sick sick joke of this part is—and it does not matter whether one looks at clause 200 clause 201 or clause 202 “Monitors to report on certain matters”—what aspect of the operations of the Auckland Central Remand Prison could the Department of Corrections possibly have a right to monitor based on its own track record and its own performance? I would suggest “Nothing!”. I would suggest that indeed the Department of Corrections would be far better off getting off its backside and going to look at the Auckland Central Remand Prison. 
I do not want to hear any more of this claptrap from the Greens that those prisoners are only remand inmates. Everything that Mr Prebble said is correct. The Auckland Central Remand Prison was set up to fail. It was given some of the worst cases possible—that is people who were not meant to be there long term. Can the Minister answer me this? Why was Ahmed Zaoui sent to Auckland Central Remand Prison? Is he not one of the greatest threats to New Zealand’s security that has ever touched our shores? Is he not a man against whom a certificate of risk has been issued because he is suspected of terrorist activities? Is he not enemy No. 1 and danger No. 1 in New Zealand today? Well according to the SIS and the Government he is. So why is he not in maximum security at Mount Eden Prison? Why is he in the Auckland Central Remand Prison? Some would suggest it was a deliberate move by people in the Department of Corrections who were thinking: “In case this guy is going to embarrass us in case Amnesty International is going to come and inspect our prison and focus on the way that this man is being contained we’ll put him in a place where it’ll come up with a clean sheet and a good report.” That attitude says to me that even the Department of Corrections has no confidence in itself. 
Things will get worse. The integrated offender management system that we have just legislated into being is not even working now. Where was the sentence plan for Mr Jarden? Where was the sentence plan for Mr Isherwood? I tell the Minister that people who have been transferred from one prison to another are going out of State prisons and landing up at the Auckland Central Remand Prison and they have never had a sentence plan done. Yet the bill says it will be done—that the integrated offender management system will work and that it will all be done within 20-odd days or whatever the figure is. The fact is it will not. If the Minister cares to have a look at the Ministry of Justice report he will realise that if the situation is not working now it will be worse in 2009 when inmate numbers will have risen—according to the Government report—from 5891 to 7340. 
The facts show that the Government has set itself up to fail and it has the audacity to tell everybody that the Department of Corrections will monitor the Auckland Central Remand Prison. I suggest it should be quite the contrary: the Government should use the management of that prison to sort out the Department of Corrections.