McLellan TraceyDr TRACEY McLELLAN (Labour): Thank you Madam Speaker and thank you for the opportunity to say a few words on the Corrections Amendment Bill. I will be choosing my words a little bit differently from the words that the previous speaker Tama Potaka has chosen to provide—a very vanilla and a very understated and slightly inaccurate version of the events that have come before us as we get to this stage which is the second reading of the Corrections Amendment Bill.Can I just say as a way of providing a little bit of background that this bill once served a mighty purpose. This bill was introduced by the previous Labour Government around the middle of last year. And this bill ordinarily one would say contains several measures that serve a mighty purpose to improve and to update the Corrections Amendment Act for the benefit of both the safety of prisoners for staff and for modernising some of the practices that happen in our corrections facilities. But what has happened and what has transpired through the process getting to this stage is the bill has radically changed in so far as I can only describe it as having been gutted. It has had a very serious amendment made to it which means that the bill is no longer recognisable in so far as its intent. It is no longer underpinned and grounded in anything that it needs to be able to do and to have the efficacy that is required so it should come as no surprise to anybody in this House that whilst Labour introduced this bill this is no longer a bill that we will be able to support.If we take a couple of steps back before we start to specify directly what's so incredibly wrong with this bill now as it stands what it could have done was set out a series of measures—it was going to as the previous speaker so blandly acknowledged modernise the Act by introducing some new powers enabling the Corrections department to monitor and collect and use and disclose prisoner communications and information sources for intelligence a little bit more modernly a little bit more robustly because times have moved on. It was also going to make changes to the disciplinary process as has been described in prisons to ensure that the process is more timely to ensure that it incentivises the conduct of good behaviour and it was going to enable some limited mixing of remand prisoners and convicted prisoners so that they could complete rehabilitation—I want to hold on to that one point for a little bit longer. We were also going to strengthen the processes for authorising the use of lethal weapons within our prison facilities.But if we go back to the point above this is all about rehabilitation because this is what the Corrections department should be all about. And when we think of that third point—enabling the mixing of remand prisoners and convicted prisoners to complete rehabilitation programmes—there have been some adjustments in this bill. But the changes made at the Justice Committee were twofold so let me explain. It enabled Corrections to provide access to offence-based rehabilitation programmes for remand convicted prisoners as well as remand accused prisoners as introduced. And look the Minister of Corrections has made an absolute song and dance about that on many occasions touting that as being some sort of massively innovative measure that he has introduced into this bill. The reality is he's just extended it slightly. We acknowledge that people in prisons are on remand for far too long and therefore for many people there's been no opportunity to engage in any rehabilitative process. We can see there's a need for that hence the fact we introduced it.But the second change that was made through the select committee process was that Cabinet directed that Te Tiriti o Waitangi provisions the principles that were grounded in the Treaty be removed from the bill—including the removal of the definition of cultural activities". There was a suite of clauses that were to be there that were to be there for the explicit purpose of guiding everything else that I've just spoken about. None of those measures are now grounded in the appropriate legislative foundation explicitly outlining and explicitly stating how we would give effect to the Treaty because we need to for no other reason than we need to. And if we do need another reason we only have to look at the fact that Māori are severely overrepresented in the prison system.At some point we have to do better. At some point someone's got to get up make some changes embed things in a legislative way where this Parliament actually says to a department "Here are our expectations. We don't want you to write up a strategy document; we've got that. We don't want you to just report back once a year or every now and again that you're on track that you've got this operationalised in a way that will actually make a difference. We are setting out our expectations to say this is a legislative foundation and by hell or high water you bloody well better make the mark work."So I'm livid at the fact that this has been changed and this is an absolute kick in the guts for all the people who have contributed to informing those principles. Iwi and Māori experts throughout the country had been involved in the development of these draft Treaty provisions as rightly so. In the Cabinet paper Mark Mitchell had the audacity of saying that Corrections had already operationalised the programmes. And look they may well have but we can't necessarily take the word of a department who at the moment are struggling to do the bare necessities correctly. They are struggling to provide the legal minimum requirements—for all sorts of reasons. It's not from a lack of wanting to but we're now asking that same department to say "Hey we'll leave it up to you about whether we actually ever start making any progress and redressing all of the things that are wrong with the imprisonment rates for Māori."It's an absolute cop out and I'm really disappointed that the Minister has done this and that we haven't so far been able to hear from him. It's an absolute cop out because the coalition has explicitly shown that it would rather do a poor job of amending this bill it would rather get it wrong and it would rather waste the opportunity of getting it right than it would to be seen in participating in what is only an imaginary separatism agenda that they have created to form a base. I just think that that is shameful; it is a dog whistle. There is absolutely no reason to have this removed from this legislation apart from the fact that you want to go on the talking trail and after-dinner circuit and tell people that you've done it.DEPUTY SPEAKER: Please don't use the word "you".Dr TRACEY McLELLAN: Apologies Madam Speaker.So that is if we're ticking off a list of priorities then the Government have certainly managed to tick that one off and I think it's incredibly shameful.Mark Mitchell also said and he noted that officials considered quite rightly so that it would likely raise concerns. Removing these provisions would likely raise concerns given the significant overrepresentation of Māori in the corrections system. Well he certainly put paid to that didn't he? Because he did so at the last minute. He ripped them out without any ability to go back and to consult without any ability to reopen submissions as he had done a month prior when he wanted to extend the ability for remand accused people to have access to rehabilitation. And we were certainly able to ventilate that to open that back up for submissions to hear from experts many of whom provided incredibly valuable information—and I'd like to take the opportunity to thank them. But when it comes to this there was no such opportunity provided. The cynic in me says if this was part of the Government's 100-day plan then there was no reason why this removal of these principles shouldn't have been well signalled shouldn't have been well accounted for and shouldn't have been included in the Amendment Paper that was taken that did afford the opportunity for some feedback. It feels a little rough that it wasn't done that way that it was simply done at the last minute and there has been no means to be able to take any recourse. But here we are at the second reading and this is the only opportunity we have to ventilate those concerns—and I encourage my colleagues to also do the same.As I said it's disappointing. The corrections bill does need to be amended and it does need to be modernised. There are things within this amendment bill that are worthy and that are good but they have all been overshadowed by this despicable move and Labour does not commend this bill to the House.DEPUTY SPEAKER: I omitted to say before the previous speaker that the question is that the motion be agreed to. So I will say now the question is that the motion be agreed to and call on Tamatha Paul who was on her feet prior to me saying that. Thank you."