Robson Matt: Corrections Bill — Second Reading 
Robson Matt: Corrections Bill — Second Reading 
[Volume:616;Page:12510] 
Hon MATT ROBSON (Deputy Leader—Progressive) 
: 
 This bill has been a long time in the making. The last bill that dealt with our prisons was in 1954. Successive Ministers of Corrections have worked on this bill and I would like to pay tribute to first of all Nick Smith who was there at the genesis of this bill. It went through to Clem Simich modestly myself—I had a hand in it—Mark Gosche and now it is being completed by Minister Paul Swain. I would like to thank Paul Swain for bringing this bill to fruition. I remember when he was the Minister for Land Information. That position was handed on to another Minister. Since then he has grown tremendously in the role of being a Minister and is now very competent in handling this position. I have been pleased to watch him grow in this particular role. 
As usual with a bill on corrections it will attract the puerile the infantile and those who want to make a profit in political terms out of the misery that many people endure from criminal offending. The bill itself deals with the issues of how we can best administer the prisons and how we can move forward on the basis of our present knowledge. I would like to pay tribute to the thousands of public servants who work in the corrections system who not only fulfil a custodial function but also a mentoring function and use their knowledge to reduce criminal offending. 
There are people like Dave Mackie Ces Lashlie who was head of the Christchurch Women’s Prison; men like Lautafi Purcell Des Ripi Mita Mohi Harris Shortland Ollie Olsen Jim Moriarty outside the prison system and many many more whose names are not known to us but who exemplify the commitment not only of public servants not only the community people who come into the prison but the feeling of the community that something can be done and something must be done inside our prison service. 
 The prison itself is only one part of dealing with criminal offending and it is actually the crudest way to deal with criminal offending. Everybody in this House at one time or another has talked about his or her support for early intervention. That would be a good start in approaching this bill—not only to look at those aspects of the bill that deal with the person who is in prison but to use the experience and the knowledge of how they got into prison and what brings them back into prison so that we can transfer that into our work in early intervention. 
I would recommend to members to become more informed on this issue. It will not hurt even those members who think they have it all sewn up with a punishment model like Mr Franks to actually read  
About Time  
which is a report written by the Department of Corrections building on the knowledge of the department itself experts outside the department and international experience on when is the best way to intervene. 
I would also recommend that those who are looking at this bill read the work of the Home Instruction Programme for Pre-school Youngsters which Leslie Max directs in a booklet called  
We Talk in Our Family Now  
which deals with intervening with young families and how to help the parents. There is an extremely interesting story in that booklet the story of Gordon. That story is about the path to prisons. Gordon says on page 68 of this book which is available in the Parliamentary Library and it would particularly benefit members on the opposite benches to do some reading on this subject: “My own family wasn’t a nice place for me. I don’t like talking about it.” He goes on to say that at 14 years of age he was excluded from school. He celebrated by drinking and did not stop until he was 40. In that time he committed crimes he beat people he beat his family and he was beaten himself. 
But it was not until the Home Instruction Programme for Pre-school Youngsters intervened in his life and in the life of his children that he changed his behaviour and is now a model for his own children who will not end up in prison. This cost was a very small amount of money to stop his children going to the place he was—in prison. It is $3000 or $4000 per year for this programme as against the $50000 that we spend when we wait for people to get into the corrections system. 
But get into the corrections system they do and that is why this bill is so important. It builds upon the good practices that have already been instituted in the corrections system. For example the integrated offender management system is helping us to tailor programmes for individuals who come into prison—not just to contain them but to find the cause of their offending the skills they lack and what means we have to intervene in their lives. For example do we need to get somebody off drugs do we need to deal with that person’s mental problems or violence or lack of employment skills and so forth? 
In my reading of this bill I was struck by the fact that we have moved on in New Zealand beyond many other correction systems in the world. The bill is taking account of the fact that inmates are in prison for an amount of time. But the prison has to deal with how people got into prison and how we can stop them coming back. So it is extremely important that the philosophy in the bill takes an approach that is holistic and ensures that it is not just a custodial sentence but is also a sentence where we aim at reintegrating people into their society and as much as possible making sure that they do not come back. 
In terms of consultation which was brought up interestingly enough by Mr Ryall I would like to say this. When I became the Minister of Corrections I continued the consultation in the north that the former National Ministers had carried out. The cost at that time was something up to half a million dollars for two prisons one at Ngawha and one just outside of Whangarei. The Whangarei prison was stopped after consultation. What did the consultation show? The consultation which was largely with the Pakeha community—Maori were largely excluded from it—said that the community did not want that prison there. National had a look at this and saw that it would lose that seat if it built the prison there. So the prison was moved to an area that was thought would be easier and that was in an area with a high Maori population and a population that would not threaten it seemed the National vote. 
 I would certainly like to pay tribute to John Carter who has been a supporter of that prison and the process to go through to build it. The point I am making is that National did carry out consultation and it knows that it cost money. In the Waikato in relation to learning from the northern experience the consultation began earlier. I challenge those on the other side who try to make profit about this and talked about corruption to say it outside the House because I will sue them. I was the Minister who did much of the consultation. I went to the hui and the meetings to set up the consultation. I know that $1.3 million is a drop in the bucket for what has already been spent on the prison. 
Tainui should be congratulated on taking an intelligent approach to learn about the prison and for not being bulldozed by those people who said that there was no such thing as consultation and that there was no future with a prison. Tainui took an intelligent approach. In particular Mr Haydn Solomon who worked for the Department of Corrections was one of the best workers I ever met inside the department in terms of his analysis and commitment. He has been an outstanding person in the consultation process in the Waikato. 
Lastly I would like to say this about privatisation. When Labour and the then Alliance—the party I came into Parliament with in 1996—learnt of the privatisation of the prison we told the then minority National Government in regard to the Auckland Central Remand Prison that that contract would be cancelled. Labour the Progressives and the Greens have stuck to that policy. There was forewarning to the private prison the Auckland Central Remand Prison. The problem with the privatisation that is extolled by National is that it has nothing to do with quality of prisons. It was all to do with opening up the public sector to privatisation for profit. The Mount Eden Prison was the stalking horse for the rest of the system. The Labour Party the Progressives and the Greens want a system that is coherent coordinated and will reduce reoffending. For that we need a public prison system throughout the whole country.