Hipkins Chris: Corrections Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Hipkins Chris: Corrections Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
[Sitting date: 26 February 2013. Volume:687;Page:8198. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
CHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka) 
: 
 I was not entirely sure what I was going to say about the Corrections Amendment Bill until I heard Jami-Lee Ross speaking. He has given me so much material to work from so I thank him for that. 
I want to reassure Jami-Lee Ross that the Labour Party does not support smoking in prisons but what we do support is Ministers acting lawfully which is something that Judith Collins the Minister of Justice does not seem to be able to do. One would think that the Minister of Justice might be able to come up with policies and regulations around prisons that actually complied with the law but no apparently not. We have had Anne Tolley come into the House and table a Supplementary Order Paper to fix up Judith Collins’ mess because Judith Collins had made decisions that did not comply with the law. The Labour Party does not support smoking in prisons but we think that if we are going to remove smoking in prisons we should actually do it in a manner that is lawful. This is not lawful. That is the problem. Judith Collins acted in a manner that was not lawful and now the Government is having to rush legislation through Parliament to fix up her mess. That is what the Labour Party has a problem with. We think the Minister should actually have got it right in the first place. 
Did the ban on smoking in prisons go through select committee scrutiny? No it did not. So now we are passing a law that has not had public scrutiny. Personally I do not want to see smoking in prisons. I do not want to see smoking in prisons but I want to see the laws that we make in this House subject to appropriate public scrutiny. That is what the Standing Orders allow for that is what the public expect and that is not what they are getting under this National Government. It thinks it is OK for it to retrospectively fix up its mistake its making an unlawful decision by passing a law by way of an amendment to this bill that fixes up its mistake without having any public scrutiny of that. 
I have a problem with that. If Jami-Lee Ross does not have a problem with it I ask him why he does not have a problem with it. Why does he have so little respect for the democratic process that he thinks it is OK for the Government to do that? Nothing nothing at all—nothing at all from Jami-Lee Ross. He has no defence of the National Government pushing through an amendment to fix up Judith Collins’ unlawful decision. He has no problem with it. It seems to be OK to Jami-Lee Ross and the National Party. Well it is not OK to the Labour Party. We think the Government should do it right the first time and if it does make a mistake it should at least go through the appropriate process to fix it and allow public scrutiny of that piece of legislation. 
Jami-Lee Ross talked a little bit about what success looks like in the corrections system. Does success look like three improper inmate releases three wrongful detentions an escape and a 72 percent failure rate to put in place inmate plans? Is that success in the prison system? Is that what this National Government regards as successful? Is that what it regards as successful? Are those things successful? Let me run through those numbers again: three improper inmate releases three wrongful detentions an escape and a 72 percent failure rate to put inmate plans in place. Is that being successful? Is that what the National Government regards as successful? Is it successful? Because that is Serco’s actual rate. That is the actual success rate for its current prison for the private prison that we currently have in place. It is an absolute failure but the Government seems to think that that is OK. 
Let us talk more about the Wiri private prison. The Wiri private prison—let us talk a little bit more about that. It is simply a moneymaking opportunity. That is what it is. It is a moneymaking opportunity. We know that because Serco has told everybody that. Serco has told everybody that it intends to make—I think I have got the figure here for how much it is intending to make. It is quite a significant amount of money that Serco is intending to make out of this private prison—30 million bucks. Thirty million bucks Serco thinks it can make out of running a private prison. That is 30 million bucks that could go into prisoner rehabilitation or any number of other things that the Government might be able to do with that money. Serco is going to take it as profit and ship it offshore. We think that Government money going into corrections should be going into prisoner rehabilitation. 
Sitting suspended from 6 p.m. to 7.30 p.m.