Borrows Chester: Corrections (Contract Management of Prisons)  Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Borrows Chester: Corrections (Contract Management of Prisons)  Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:653;Page:2043] 
CHESTER BORROWS (National—Whanganui) 
: 
 This is a robust debate. We have to bear in mind that each side of the House has a philosophy. The previous National Government brought in private prison management at the Auckland Central Remand Prison and that remand centre was run by a private provider. That was canned by the previous Labour Government for a purely philosophical reason and the purely philosophical reason it gave was that the State should be the only body to run prisons in this country. That was the only reason. At the time that Labour canned the private running of prisons its members did not go on about what was happening in the United States and they did not go on about what was happening in Australia or anywhere else in respect of the private running of prisons. All they said was that it ran counter to their philosophy so they were going to shut it down and do things differently. Now we have had a change of Government. This particular Government campaigned heavily on the use of private managers to run State-owned prisons because of the benefits that they afford to inmates and the taxpayer. 
I take the previous speaker up on a number of points that he made around the private delivery of prison services within this country. One point he made fairly late in his speech was that we should concentrate on providing fences at the top of the cliff instead of privatised buses at the bottom of the cliff. Who actually owns and operates the buses in the prison system at the moment and who did under the last Government? It is and was Chubb. Chubb was contracted by the Labour Government to provide transport services for correctional institutions. It has done so for years and it continued to for 9 long years under the Labour Government. Labour thought that was a really really good idea. 
Labour members also talked about the privatisation of police services. Of course we know that in this country we have private provision of core police services right across the whole range of police services. If we look at who is driving police prisoners to and from the remand centres and the courts whom do we see doing that? And who did that under the Labour Government? It was private providers. When we needed scene guards at the scene of a serious crime who was doing that? It was security guards. Who was paying their bills? It was a private provider paid for under contract by the police. 
All around our provision of Government services in this country whether it be in the area of health education police corrections or justice we have private providers. I tell members to look at the New Zealand record that is there before your eyes if you care to look at it—I apologise Mr Deputy Speaker before someone jumps up and takes a point of order; I was not intending to draw you into the debate. If we looked at the provision of services at the Auckland Central Remand Prison what would we find? We would find that rehabilitative services were offered at the Auckland Central Remand Prison that were not offered anywhere else for remand prisoners in this country. Under the previous Labour Government if someone was in prison for fewer than 2 years he or she got nothing absolutely nothing in terms of rehabilitative services within a State prison. I am pleased to say the National Government is looking at introducing those rehabilitative services at an earlier stage than that. In fact if people were in prison for a longer period than 2 years they got nothing until they had been there for two-thirds of their sentence. 
Last week I was privileged to attend Rimutaka Prison and the graduation of people from a Sycamore Tree programme run by a private provider. Who is the private provider? It is Prison Fellowship. It was very interesting to speak to some of the prisoners there and to one particular person who was able to tell me how easy it was for him for several years of his prison term to access drugs at any time. They appeared through the flap in his prison cell at 2 a.m. There were no prisoners wandering around the corridors at 2 a.m.; the people doing that were all prison officers who were employed by the State. 
When we look at the way the only privately run prison has been operated within this country we see there were fewer escapes from that remand centre than from prisons run by the State. It had fewer beatings fewer problems fewer people put on report and better outcomes for the people who were there. It was so much better than what was being offered within the State system that when the Labour Government renationalised that particular facility what did it do? It took over all the rehabilitative services that were previously being offered in the private prison because they were so good and because the prison had had such a fantastic record with them. 
Some very good points were made by my colleague Te Ururoa Flavell from the Maori Party in respect of the ability of iwi to be able to contract as private providers of prison services. I was interested last week when I attended the Te Ihi Tu project in New Plymouth. It is currently on its last legs but it is contracted to provide services to the Department of Corrections. The measures that were run over that iwi-based programme were so stringent that when we stack up the review ordered by the Department of Corrections with the response from Te Ihi Tu Trust we find it seems to be very much wanting. I have some real fears regarding the ability of iwi-based programmes to be able to compete on a level playing field with others who are competing for the same contracts as they are being run by the department at the moment. I look forward to the further work that the National Government will do to maintain the level of service delivery across all the needs of the prison population.  
The point that we need to bear in mind is that the owner of the prison facilities will continue to be the State. The fact that we have private providers contracting to provide services is really based on one premise and one premise only: we must get value for money out of the money that we put into the corrections system and the people who go into jail should always come out better than they were when they went in in terms of their ability to live a rehabilitated life within society. If people go to jail having literacy and numeracy problems then before they come out someone should have addressed those problems. Well under the previous Labour Government that did not happen. If a person is one of the 83 percent of people in prison who have a drug or alcohol dependency problem then someone should address that. Whether a person is in jail for more or less than 2 years someone has to address that problem and it was only in the last 18 months of the previous Labour Government that we had anywhere near the number of drug and alcohol rehabilitative beds that we needed in order to be able to cater to that problem. Only 44 people attended drug and alcohol residential rehabilitative services in the year 2006. That figure rose to 174 in the last year that Labour was in Government yet we have a prison population of 8500 people. That was absolutely disgraceful! 
It will be a much better record when we turn around and look at the record of the private provision of penal services in this country. I am proud to be standing here in support of the Corrections (Contract Management of Prisons) Amendment Bill.