Power Simon: Appropriation (2007/08 Estimates) Bill — Third Reading Imprest Supply Debate 
Power Simon: Appropriation (2007/08 Estimates) Bill — Third Reading Imprest Supply Debate 
[Volume:641;Page:11067] 
SIMON POWER (National—Rangitikei) 
: 
 I have quietly been a bit of a fan of Annette King for quite some time. I have always thought that she was a good politician and somebody who could deliver the goods when the pressure came on. I think I know Annette King reasonably well. I have watched her in operation for a long long time: from back in the days when she was running the local economic development agency in the Manawatu right through to her being a senior Cabinet Minister in this Government. I can tell the people who are watching or listening to this debate that I do not think she believed what she said over the last 10 minutes. Annette King did not have the old flair about her that we have come to expect of her. She just did not have the same commitment to delivering the message that she has shown in such a strident way for a long period of time. It was almost as though she knew something was about to change. 
In the third reading today of the Appropriation (2007/08 Estimates) Bill which as Darren Hughes pointed out to me may be taken with an Imprest Supply Bill I have only 10 minutes to speak so I thought I would spend my 10 minutes on outlining 10 things that could have been done a lot better in the Department of Corrections. I think it is well worth spending just a minute—[ 
Interruption 
] I have only 10 minutes—one minute on each. 
Hon Annette King 
: You’ve only got eight now! 
SIMON POWER 
: I probably have only 8 minutes left now; that is right—40 seconds on each. It will cost $253 per night or just over $92000 per year to keep an inmate incarcerated in a New Zealand prison under this Government. Now that cost does have an impact on the Appropriation (2007/08 Estimates) Bill primarily because in 2004-05 it was going to be only $57000 per year. In fact Damien O’Connor told the House only a month and a half ago that the price was $69000 per year when he knew all along that it was $92000 per year. 
That cost is because of one thing and one thing alone: the appalling way that the process for managing and building the new prisons has occurred under this Government. The Government knows the process has not worked because the refurbishment of Mount Eden Prison will not follow the collaborative working arrangement scheme for building prisons. Damien O’Connor has given that away. It comes on the back of revelations—despite what Matt Robson said and despite what the Hon Paul Swain said—that Damien O’Connor has had to come down to the House in the last month and admit to the  
Northern Advocate 
 paper in Whangarei that Ngawha prison is sinking. He told this House there were no expected future problems with regard to site stability at Ngawha prison. This estimates bill and the debate we have had around this Budget does not allow for the massive cost that will land on this vote in order to rectify that particular engineering shambles. We know that Mount Eden Prison will not use the system that has been used in such a massive construction blowout. 
We know that during the last short time the Department of Corrections has spent nearly $1 million per month on external consultants. We know that the Department of Corrections is estimated over the next short while to spend $311000 on chartered flights for prisoners which is four times the amount that the Government spent in its first year in office on chartering planes to move prisoners around. I can advise members on the Treasury benches that there is more to come on that issue. 
We know also that in the year to 31 May $1.7 million was paid in bonuses to Department of Corrections staff on the back of everything that has gone wrong in that department in the last 18 months. It is almost impossible to believe that the senior management at the department sat around a mahogany table or the like and decided they would actually seriously reward managers at the head office for the appalling job they have done over the last 18 months by writing out cheques—taxpayer-funded cheques—for $1.7 million. We know that not everybody at the head office of the department agreed with that particular assessment of their performance because nearly a quarter of the staff there have chucked in their jobs in the past year according to figures that we have obtained. 
We also know that much work remains to be done in certain key areas of operation in the department not the least of which is prisoner transportation. We saw a damning Ombudsmen’s report in recent months that showed the department was told three times in the space of 3 months of serious concerns about the safety of prisoner transport by Chubb and the security monitoring department but did nothing. 
Looking ahead to the 12 months that this appropriation bill will grant vote money to the department for we know that still outstanding is a report from Treasury into the prison budget overspend in the sum of just under half a billion dollars on the building of four new prisons. A figure that Damien O’Connor used earlier this year was $890 million in order to build those four new prisons. In recent days the figure that has crept into debates in this House from Damien O’Connor has been $1.2 billion. The cost has moved up from $890 million to that level without too much of a fuss from those who should have been listening carefully to the Minister’s words. 
We have here a department that in the last 12 months has established such a track record for bungling incompetence that it gives the public of this country no confidence at all that the next 12 months will see any improvements in the department. We know that the money that has been spent on things like landscaping prisons—a sum of $11 million—could have been spent on drug and alcohol rehabilitation courses or work schemes for prisoners: matters that operational funding could have been used on to reduce reoffending by our prison population. We know that something like just under 80 percent of prisoners will be back inside prison within 5 years of their release—or certainly they will be convicted of an offence. With those moneys that have been wasted such as the $1.8 million or just under that sum that was paid in bonuses to the department’s head office staff how many offenders could have attended drug and alcohol rehabilitation courses or could have been on meaningful work schemes that would give them opportunities and skills that they will otherwise not have when they leave that environment of incarceration? How many of those people—not to mention the victims of their crimes—could have had the opportunity to have crime reduced by money being spent in an appropriate and a thoughtful way rather than on the wastage that has occurred in the department? 
Darren Hughes who is a well-meaning sort of character in the Labour Party made a comment earlier in my contribution today asking what National would do to reduce those costs. Well I say to Mr Hughes I think it is pretty self-evident. We would create contracting environments where contractors stick to a simple thing called a quote which they give at the beginning of a construction project. We would make sure that money is not wasted on things like landscaping prisons or on bonuses paid to head office staff and that it goes into meaningful drug and alcohol rehabilitation courses work schemes and the types of programmes that help the victims of crime to avoid reoffending occurring against them and that give offenders—particularly I say to Mr Hughes young offenders—the opportunity to redeem their lives.