Lees-Galloway Iain: Corrections Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Lees-Galloway Iain: Corrections Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
[Sitting date: 12 February 2013. Volume:687;Page:7753. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY (Labour—Palmerston North) 
: 
 Well I am surprised to find myself on my feet already after such a short and pathetic call from actually one of the better-performing members from the National backbench. But I think that if Alfred Ngaro really believed in this bill the Corrections Amendment Bill if he really had something to say about this bill and if he thought that this was a piece of legislation that was going to make a positive difference for the community that he has come to Parliament to represent he might have said a little bit more than the 30-second contribution we got from him. 
The Corrections Amendment Bill and the associated Supplementary Order Paper 171 are absolutely symptomatic of some of the idiosyncrasies of the National Party and of this National-led Government. First of all they express the Government’s desire to privatise absolutely everything whether it is our State-owned assets whether it is aspects of the welfare system whether it is roadside vehicle checking or now of course whether it is one of those fundamental core State services or State functions of incarcerating people who have fallen foul of the law. It does not matter what it is; this Government wants to privatise it. Why does it want to privatise it? Because there is money in it for its mates—that is why. Whether it is selling off our power companies—it is not doing it for mum and dad investors. This is the party of big capital. This is the party of big foreign capital. They are the people who are going to make money out of the privatisation of our prisons and that is what we are seeing here with this legislation. 
But it also represents I think the absolutely gung-ho hands-off arrogant approach that this Government takes to governing and legislating. That is because poor Anne Tolley has to come along with this Supplementary Order Paper to clean up the mess left behind by Judith Collins the future leader of the National Party who was told when she announced that she was going to ban smoking in prisons—something that I think most members in the House are comfortable with even though when you ban anything you get a black market and of course there is now quite an active black market in tobacco in our prisons—that we were happy to see it happen. But we said to Judith Collins that she needed to slow down and do it properly because New Zealand is actually a democracy. I do not know whether Judith Collins is aware of that. I do not think she really does democracy very well but New Zealand is a democracy and what Judith Collins did was illegal. That is what it comes down to. What Judith Collins did was illegal and now Anne Tolley has to come along and try to clean up that mess. 
The problem with regard to this Supplementary Order Paper of course is first of all that we are not entirely convinced that this actually solves the problem. It may still leave the Government open to legal challenges. It may still leave the taxpayers vulnerable to having to pay out more money to prisoners who can take the Government to court and challenge their smoking ban. So we are not actually convinced it will do the job. But what is worse is that it is retrospective. This Government cannot even admit that it got it wrong that it stuffed it up that it was too gung-ho that it was too arrogant. It cannot take it on the chin and accept that what has gone already is correct and that Judith Collins got it wrong and she opened up the taxpayer to having to give payouts to prisoners. Government members cannot just say: “Oh we got it wrong.” No no they have to try to make it as though it never happened—as though it never ever happened. Well that is wrong. That is wrong and it just reflects the way this Government wants to do everything fast. It wants to make everything go faster. It has got its foot on the accelerator but no one has got their hands on the steering wheel and when that happens it is absolute carnage. That is the result of this Government’s gung-ho arrogant attitude to governing. 
Incarcerating people and taking away their freedom no matter what they have done is a core State function that can be carried out only by an elected Government and the infrastructure of an elected Government. We do not believe that such core State responsibilities should be handed over to the private sector in order for a company like Serco to make a profit. Maybe this is why the Prime Minister is so excited about sending refugees over to Australia because of course it is Serco that runs those offshore refugee detention centres. Maybe it is going to build another one here in New Zealand. Maybe that is what it is all about. 
We are fundamentally opposed both to this bill and to the Supplementary Order Paper.