Turei Metiria: Corrections Amendment Bill (No 2) — Second Reading 
Turei Metiria: Corrections Amendment Bill (No 2) — Second Reading 
[Volume:651;Page:1006] 
METIRIA TUREI (Green) 
: 
 Hey look here is a bill—the Corrections Amendments Bill (No 2)—that has actually been sent to select committee! The first for the Government? I am quite impressed—although it was the old Government that sent it to select committee and not this Government. So there we go the first one—on the last sitting day of this year we are able to debate a bill that has actually had some kind of public scrutiny. Yay! It is about time. 
The Green Party opposes this legislation. It is a mixed bag. We have liked some bits and we have had some concerns about some other parts. My colleague Nandor Tanczos delivered the first reading speech on this bill. He raised issues that we wanted to see addressed in the select committee. Unfortunately although there was a good select committee process for the bill those issues were not addressed and on that basis we are not able to support it. 
I shall go through a couple of those issues in my address today. One of them that has raised a bit of an ugly head over the last week when we think about the issues involved in it concerns the opportunity or the ability to look into prisoners’ mail. There is a justification for doing that where there are real issues about whether criminal activity is being discussed—that is a fair enough approach. But the legislation does not provide for any kinds of constraints. In fact it just identifies justification as prejudice to the maintenance of law. Nandor Tanczos quite rightly raised the issue that any kind of political activity even the desire to change the law in a perfectly legitimate way—whether it is a political way or even a legal way—could be considered by Department of Corrections staff who make these assessments to be of some kind of prejudice to the maintenance of the existing law. 
This provision opens up the opportunity for staff to look at any mail and to make assessments about the political interests of inmates. That is a serious issue about human rights. Inmates are not stripped entirely of their rights when they go to prison. They are entitled to be engaged in political activity if that is what they choose to do and to pursue legal issues if that is what they want to do. Mr Garrett of course has a very radical and very extremist attitude to prison issues. But a sensible attitude to prison is that when an offender offends and gets a prison sentence it is the denial of his or her liberty that is the punishment and not the denial of dignity—not the denial of human rights. In fact what we find and what know to be the case is that the more time people spend in prison being denied any kind of ability to rehabilitate to deal with the issues that have led them there—all of those things—they are more likely to reoffend once they have left prison. Prison is not obviously a place for dealing with issues of reoffending because it actually leads to more reoffending later on. 
None the less that is not the issue I want to address here; the issue is about the ability for Department of Corrections staff to investigate mail. We have just had an exposé of the police in particular using spies and narks to spy on political organisations legitimate political organisations and even political parties such as the Green Party—cops could easily get on the Green Party’s mailing list. We will send people stuff if they want to hear about what we are doing. One does not have to use a spy or a nark to be sent our press releases or our campaigning information because we like to tell people what we are doing. We are a very open and transparent party. But instead of using proper processes we have police using spies and narks to do that instead. 
In that context then and having prisoners also subject to that kind of political scrutiny by Department of Corrections authorities potentially by the police is a real issue and that was not dealt with in select committee. We would have liked to see some reasonable discussion of that in the select committee process. That did not happen. That is one of the reasons why we cannot support this bill. 
The second reason raised by my colleague was about the extension of search powers for non-prison areas—areas where prisoners do not go but staff do. We have heard from Phil Goff about the concerns of staff bringing in contraband. That is a fair enough concern and there does need to be a process for managing that. I have spent a reasonable amount of time visiting the new Milton Prison. I have visited a number of prisons around the country. The Milton Prison is very close to where I live in Dunedin. In my experience those staff are fantastic. They are working in a very new environment a new physical environment that helps to build and retain the dignity of the staff. 
In the select committee process we were looking for changes that would at least identify some reason why those staff areas might be searched by other authorities. There are no safeguards for the privacy of those Department of Corrections staff or for the employment rights in that relationship. There is no requirement for example that the search be conducted on reasonable grounds that there has been a problem with that staff member or staff in that institution. There are no grounds to suspect at all in the legislation so it is an absolutely free power by authorities to investigate and search those staff areas with no consideration at all for the fact that those staff are working in a very difficult very tense and highly politically contentious environment. Yet they are trying to do their best for both the offenders in the institution and for maintaining a high standard in those institutions. 
This legislation comes at a time when there are increasing attacks on Department of Corrections staff. There have been law changes that will increase the muster in prison. There have been threats by National—by the Minister of Corrections and the Minister of Justice—to have a process of double bunking in prisons which directly puts corrections staff at serious risk in those prisons when we have the doubling of numbers in a prison environment increased stress increased violence and increased aggression. 
National has been highly critical of corrections staff and with any institution of that size and with those kinds of conditions there will always be the occasional problems. That does not justify the kinds of criticisms from National. The chief executive has been called to resign by National—almost on a weekly basis. National opposed staff bonuses in 2007. Simon Power has called them incompetent describing blunder after blunder and giving no support at all for those staff. This legislation is another step towards removing the kind of support that those staff need in order to do a good job. 
In the kind of environment that they are in and with the responsibilities that they have they must be well-paid well-supported and at least trusted to some extent to do their job properly. This legislation strips away all of that trust. It also leads on to the very real concern that is proposed by National about the privatisation of prisons. We have had one privately run prison in this country. We campaigned to stop that from being able to be continued and the private management was taken out of that prison and for good reason—particularly about the staffing issues. Our concern is about staffing issues for Department of Corrections staff. 
In the public sector we have had massive levels of resignations from the Department of Corrections over the last little while. In some areas 40 percent of staff have less than 2 years’ experience in their role. Why would we have experienced people wanting to do that work to do those jobs in such a difficult environment if there is such a low level of trust from this Parliament and from the institution itself? In terms of private prisons we have even worse examples. The Australasian correctional management company that ran the remand prison in Auckland had an appalling international reputation of unsafe work practices. In fact it was the organisation that lost a court case when a staff member took the company to court for unsafe work practices. It is owned by an international organisation Wackenhut Corporation which runs a whole range of prisons around the world known for assaults on staff retaliation issues contraband inside prisons the silencing of witnesses in prisons withholding of information that has been required by the court in prison and a massive turnover of staff. 
If we are to have the kind of safe and secure environment in our correctional institutions where offenders need to be treated well enough such that they retain some dignity so that when they leave prison they are less likely to reoffend we need to have staff who feel secure in their jobs who are well respected by the community and who are not undermined every day by this Parliament. It is not only Ministers making comments about those staff saying that they are terrible but also putting law in place that undermines that trust. We will not be supporting this bill.