Clendon DavidDAVID CLENDON (Green): I would really love to see the Budget we have just heard spoken about. It is a very different document from the one that the rest of us have read in the last couple of weeks.Budget day is a day when it becomes very obvious about Governments making choices. The Budget is in a sense a summary of the Government's decisions around how to generate revenue and how to spend public dollars—in the public interest one would hope. It is when we see in stark relief the Government's priorities and its direction of travel for the next year. The Government has an almost infinite number of options in terms of how it chooses to spend its money and for that reason alone it eludes me the reason this Government chooses to spend its money in ways that we know will perpetuate failure. It continues to put money and resources into practices and policies that have failed are failing and will continue to fail. Nowhere is that more obvious than in Vote Justice and particularly in Vote Corrections.Here is some evidence for that. Mr Joyce in delivering the Budget made much of the Government's investment in infrastructure. He told us in fact that Budget 2017 takes New Zealand's infrastructure investment to another level. OK—first some good news. There is $392 million for new schools and classrooms. That has got to be a good thing. Fewer teachers and fewer students every day confronted with inadequate teaching spaces degraded teaching spaces and very poor learning environments. There is $392 million for new schools and classrooms—tick. We can support that.There is another $150 million additional capital for the health sector. Yes the health sector can consume vast amounts of money and does. There is $150 million towards improving Kiwis' access to health services. That is a good thing. There is $98 million to upgrade Wellington's metro rail network. Yes perhaps our capital city will get a bit closer to having a respectable 21st century public transport system. There is another $100 million we are told for the Crown Land Development Programme to free up Government land for much-needed housing. The grand total of those infrastructure investments I have just mentioned is some $740 million. It is quite a lot of money but not quite as much as the Government is spending on one single line item and that is expanding prison capacity. There is $763 million this year just on expanding prison capacity—not running the prisons not operating the prisons. The total budget there is about $1.7 billion.This Government has made its choice to spend more money on creating more prison cells than on classrooms public transport health investment and freeing up land for housing for New Zealanders. What an extraordinarily perverse set of decisions that is. We know that prisons perpetuate failure. If prisons are the answer then it was a very silly question.We know that many of the 10000-plus people currently in prison in New Zealand are there because of issues around drug and alcohol abuse. It was said some years ago—in 2011 in fact—The criminal justice system as it is configured at present fails to provide the treatment and rehabilitation that would ameliorate the impact of the abuse and prevent its recurrence—the abuse of drugs and alcohol. In consequence these problems get worse the level of offending goes up not down. The evidence is overwhelming. What is lacking is the will to do what is necessary to make things better." This Budget perpetuates that lack of will to make things better which is a point I will return to shortly.Another commentator had this to say about building prisons: "Building more of them on a large scale is something I don't think any New Zealander wants to see. They want a safer community and they want protection from the worst elements of criminal behaviour but they don't want to be a prison colony. It's the fastest-rising cost in Government in the last decade. My view is we shouldn't build any more of them."Would our friends on the National benches choose to guess what woolly-headed liberal thinker made those comments—saying we ought not to build any more prisons? It was a gentleman by the name of Bill English. The Rt Hon Bill English said we ought not to build any more of them. In a moment of clarity I think Mr English got it dead right. It is a shame this Government has not taken that advice.We will look at the distribution of Vote Corrections—66 percent of the vote some $940 million - odd is going towards simply custodial services keeping people locked away. Two-thirds of every dollar in the vote is simply to keep people locked up. Just over $217 million or 15 percent of the vote goes to funding community services delivering sentences and orders in the community and electronic monitoring. Fourteen percent of the vote—scarcely more than $200 million—is devoted to case management and interventions designed to address the underlying causes of criminal reoffending.Therein lies the problem. Two out of every three dollars—66 percent of the spend on Corrections—are simply keeping people locked away. We are devoting only 14 percent of the vote to actually try to resolve the problem—trying to heal people trying to prevent reoffending trying to reduce the number of people in our prisons through that revolving door that so many inmates experience. A term in prison a term of freedom another term in prison—longer and longer terms in prison. We develop these things called career criminals. Our prisons perpetuate offending; they do not resolve it. The sad thing is we know there are better ways to spend what are scarce taxpayer dollars—hard-earned taxpayer dollars.I recently visited Southland and spent some time there with people delivering social services.Todd Barclay: Good place.DAVID CLENDON: It is an excellent part of the world. I can vouch for that indeed. We missed you at the Ballance Farm Environment Awards. I was the only MP there other than the Minister surprisingly. That was in Invercargill last week.To return to my point I saw the social services in Invercargill working very hard and effectively to deal with people's drug addictions their mental health problems and with men with a history of violence. That suite of services is in danger of falling over for want of a few tens of thousands of dollars which this Government simply will not top up. They are having to draw on their reserves and they can do that for only a very short time. If that suite of services fails you will see more people going into jail at $100000 a head each year. Why not give a few tens of thousands of dollars to the social service providers?A few weeks ago in Gisborne—another wonderful part of the country—I was astonished to discover that Tai Rāwhiti - Gisborne sadly vies with Northland for the highest rates of P addiction and abuse in the country. It is not a competition that I am pleased Northland is in. I was astonished to hear that nowhere in Gisborne is there any facility to treat people who are addicts or are abusing P. There is simply no treatment service in Gisborne the centre of Tai Rāwhiti in terms of population. Anybody with a problem with P is I believe looking to Rotorua Hamilton or further afield. What a travesty when that is one of the serious drivers of crime.Similarly in Northland everywhere you look around drug and alcohol treatment centres around mental health services—everywhere and always—there is a waiting list. Services are overextended trying desperately hard to provide services to keep people away from offending and to heal them and they are scratching around trying to do too much with too little resource too little money. Again it is for want of a few tens of thousands of dollars in the same year that we are spending $763 million expanding prison capacity and perpetuating the problem which is what this Government seems determined to do.Similarly in our largest city I know that towards the end of last year people with P addictions or abuse problems with P were waiting anything up to 12 weeks to get an appointment in a treatment programme—nearly 3 months. People either sent by the courts or self-referring for treatment for P use were being told: "Yep come back in 12 weeks and we'll see what we can do for you." That is extraordinary. It is not good public policy; it is an abuse of social investment.We know what the problems are. I recommend an excellent article in the New Zealand Corrections Journal in December last year. It is a great piece of research outlining the problems the drivers of crime the reasons people offend and reoffend—I do not have time now to speak to them. But Corrections and the justice ministry know what the problems are and know what the solutions are; yet this Government's choices are all about investing in perpetuating the problem rather than dealing with it solving it and offering real solutions. Thank you."