Davidson MaramaASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jenny Salesa): Kia ora members. Before we broke for dinner we were debating the Corrections Amendment Bill. The next call is a Green Party call.Hon MARAMA DAVIDSON (Green): Thank you very much Madam Speaker for the opportunity to stand. So I will be putting clear on record that we will be opposing this corrections bill. I'll outline the main concerns and I will also look at some of the things in the bill which we think are positive but which don't go far enough and aren't enough to combat the potential harm that we think this bill causes. I first want to put on record that I understand the intentions behind the bill. The PR that was put out by my colleague Minister Davis today talked about boosting rehabilitation and reintegration of prisoners"—now that we have long supported. What we are concerned about in three main points I think is the Tiriti approach that is outlined in our view doesn't go far enough—and because it is superficial in a certain way what that means is that we could be excusing a less-than-deep approach to a truly Tiriti-led way of working around corrections. We definitely are concerned around the age-mixing of children and adults and we maintain that that mixing is always a breach of the rights of the child especially but not limited to international law something that we've—as a Government as a country—been rapped on the hands about for a long long time. We do have concerns as others have stated in the House about the mixing of sentenced and remand prisoners together in rehabilitation. One of the main points there is that absolutely people including remand prisoners should be able to access good services and supports including therapeutic support; there in our eyes is no need to enable mixing of prisoners to be able to do that. So the Titiri concerns I'm happy to pick up in a little bit more detail. There is a reference incorporated to Te Tiriti on the paper that refers to—I think the language used is "engaging" with Māori on matters relating to rehabilitation and to "provide access to mātauranga Māori". All of these references fall far short of the true transformational reform that is needed to bring our system of justice actually in line with Tiriti justice and Tiriti obligations of actual Māori leadership of Te Ao Māori - based justice. We therefore don't want to kid the public or the House into thinking that this can start to serve the transformational and deeper requirements that are needed. The bill also requires Corrections to develop maintain and implement a strategy focusing on improving outcomes for Māori in the justice system—and here again we want to maintain that we keep our collective focus on the truly foundational changes that are needed. I think here I was going to raise the example of the success of the rangatahi youth courts and I've been privileged to be able to attend some of those hearings over the years. They have been in action for about 15 years now and I think we're up to around about more than 15 of those around the country. I was privileged to attend the launch of the Manurewa Kōti Rangatahi which I believe was the second after Gisborne. So there have been authentic and enduring successes across those approaches especially in terms of reducing and lowering re-offending rates—good good ka pai.So the differences between those quite foundational changes in the ways of working and the quite superficial references in this bill to Tiriti justice and Tiriti accountability are quite stark and there's a massive contrast there. So that is a concern and we are highlighting that. I think we are also echoing other concerns that many members in here have raised with the staffing shortages and the existing centralised mega prison system developed by successive Governments.Part of my role especially as a prevention of violence Minister is to visit prisons and meet with corrections staff. Many many many times over all of my years in Parliament—certainly recently—I've been hearing the concerns raised directly to me about shortages which I know the Minister and Corrections are aware of and I know that we are all wanting to support and see improvement in proper staffing and safe staffing. Safety for workforces is always a concern for the Green Party—and safety for everyone in prisons as well. So that was the first Tiriti-approach concern. If I can go a little bit more [Looks at clock]—oh goodness that goes fast—into age-mixing and mixing of sentenced and remand prisoners in rehabilitation our system still lacks the properly resourced evidence-based and standardised rehabilitation programmes. So in terms of the current availability and quality of programmes on offer there's not good consistency between institutions and existing sentenced prisoners are therefore regularly denied a place also in programmes like drug and alcohol rehabilitation anger management or literacy. Others have spoken about that quite scandalous gap of many people in prison actually having dropped through some quite scandalous gaps in education systems for example let alone mental health care. So it's still extremely unclear why the Government needs to make legal the mixing of convicted and remand prisoners to be able to offer that support. I'm really really looking forward to what the Justice Committee contributions highlight in light of this particular breach of a long understood standard under international and domestic human rights laws.And now I come to what is always a breach of the rights of the child: the age-mixing of children and adults. That on its own is a bridge too far for us to be able to outright support. And again I highlight the fact that there is any thinking that there are situations where mixing of young people and adult prisoners could be in the best interests of the child given decades of extremely consistent research ongoing binding international tool standards and—what I said at the start—the specific and regular criticism that we've received over decades by the UN Committee on Rights of the Child. Yes since 1990 so even more than I thought—which was of course the ratification of the convention and that's one of the most universally accepted and binding of human rights laws. So with those three concerns we felt that threshold was far too potentially harmful for us to support this bill. Again we look forward to select committee contributions.I'm going to finish by acknowledging some of what we think are potentially good things of course. So the process for authorising the use of non-lethal weapons and the legislating where the Minister must consider sufficient information relevant to the use of non-lethal weapons such as operational policies and training materials for staff—ka pai good. There are a number of other miscellaneous amendments. Others have picked up on allowing body imaging technology to be used instead of a rub down. And again as a prevention of violence Minister I absolutely support those amendments in this bill but they could be done at an operational level and wouldn't have needed legislation. They could be amended at the regulatory and operational level and they are something that could have been done this whole time. I support those but it's still not enough to meet the threshold of potential harm. Thank you Madam Speaker."