Clendon DavidDAVID CLENDON (Green): This is a week when one could almost feel some sympathy for the Minister of Finance. He has no doubt worked very hard to get the Government books in order and to generate at least on paper a surplus of $1.8 billion. His colleague from the ACT Party is quite keen to disburse that on tax cuts. No doubt other Ministers are equally quite keen to spread some largesse around as we approach election year.But sadly for all those prospective big spenders this money—the alleged surplus—and much more besides is about to disappear into a very deep dark hole. It is going to disappear into concrete and wire and electronic alarms and steel doors. In short we are about to see another orgy of prison-building—completely unhelpful and completely counter-productive but apparently this Government's only solution. It must be particularly galling for Mr English recalling that 5 years ago here was the Minister who was brave enough and honest enough to publicly state that prisons are a moral and a fiscal failure" and to express the hope that the Wiri Prison would be the last new prison we saw built in New Zealand for a very long time.Sadly 5 years on we are about to see another 80 men jammed into an already crowded facility at Ngāwhā. We know that as the numbers rise in that prison so too will the tension levels and the stress levels. The outbreaks of violence will inevitably follow. We are about to see a 245-bed expansion at Mt Eden prison the site of this Government's dangerous and disastrous experiment with private prison management so well described a few minutes ago by our colleague Mr Davis. And the jewel in the crown—the new jewel in the Government's corrections system crown—is a 1500-bed facility at Waikeria.Our prison muster is at historically high levels. In 1995 we had fewer than 4500 people in prison. By 2005 despite a drop in the crime rate—despite less offending—we nevertheless had seen the muster climb to some 7500 and 11 years on very soon we can expect to exceed 10000 people in prison. This huge increase is not the result of more offending. It is not because New Zealanders are becoming more lawless. It is not inevitable. It is not irreversible. The increase in the muster the number of people we are pointlessly putting away is due to a failure of public policy: a flawed belief that you can punish people into getting better and a completely misguided belief—against all the evidence and against logic—that spending more money on locking more people away for longer is a better solution than addressing the causes of offending and reoffending. Almost 20 years of penal populism—of being tough on crime—has delivered an entirely predictable negative and costly result. This Government's solution announced this week is more of the same. We are seeing a complete failure of imagination and a complete failure of political courage—the courage to make change despite the obvious and glaring need to do so.The Government seems to be locked into a model where if you have a problem you build your way out of it. The roads are congested—"Let's build more roads." A burgeoning prison population—"We'll build some more prisons. We'll create more capacity to lock people away. Let's impose more financial cost and more human misery. Maybe eventually it'll all come right." Well actually no it will not. We do need to change. All the evidence says that and that is something that the Greens in Government would and will do. We need a complete change a break from the failed practices of the past. We need to develop and deliver an integrated strategic programme of investment into keeping people out of jail. It is a radical proposition for this Government: let us invest in keeping people out of jail rather than spending money keeping more people in. I know that is difficult to comprehend but I am sure that it can get there.I have recently visited two countries where they are getting it right. I visited Norway and Finland countries with populations around 20 percent bigger than ours but with prison populations of 60 percent less. They have learnt the lesson over time that investing long-term secure investments in real solutions is actually the way to reduce your prison population: humane treatment both in prisons and in the community and commitment to long-term strategic integrated management of the problem rather than a knee-jerk default to the failed policies of the past. Kia ora."