Hipkins Chris: Corrections (Contract Management of Prisons) Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Hipkins Chris: Corrections (Contract Management of Prisons) Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
[Sitting date: 17 November 2009. Volume:659;Page:7742. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
CHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka) 
: 
 Let us be very clear about what the Corrections (Contract Management of Prisons) Amendment Bill is all about. This bill is about an ideological position taken by the National Government that the private sector is better at everything and that the Government should be cut back. If there is one thing we have learnt about the National Government since the election it is that it will privatise something if it cannot cut it and it will contract it out if it cannot privatise it. So if National cannot cut it it will privatise it and if it cannot privatise it it will contract it out. This is an ideologically driven bill. It is part of National’s overall commitment to privatisation. National denied it before the election but since the election it is becoming more and more apparent that this is exactly the same National Party as was in Government in the 1990s which wrecked the electricity system the railways and everything else. That is exactly what it wants to do with prisons as well. 
As Clayton Cosgrove pointed out the Labour Party has two principal objections to this bill. We object in principle to the idea that the incarceration of prisoners should be a profit-making venture but also perhaps more important we object to this bill on accountability grounds. It is absolutely fundamental that the people who are locking up prisoners should be accountable to Parliament. They should be accountable through the Ombudsman the Auditor-General and the Minister of Corrections and the Minister should be accountable. 
We can see what will happen if this bill goes through. Unfortunately it looks like it will because the National Party will use its significant numbers in the House to ram it through. We can imagine what will happen when there are the first escapes or the first riots in a prison. I know what John Key’s position will be. He will be relaxed about it because John Key is relaxed about pretty much everything. Would it not be nice to have a Prime Minister who took the job seriously? I do not think that will happen under this Government so we have to get used to the fact that he will be relaxed about it whatever happens. The Minister will stand up in the House and say that it is not actually a matter for her; it is a matter for the private prison operator. I can already hear her saying that dripping with venom as she will be. Her saying that is one of the principle reasons why the Labour Party is absolutely opposed to this bill. 
However my colleague Rick Barker has put up three Supplementary Order Papers that make good sense if this bill is to be forced through by National. The first reinstates the role of the Ombudsman. I think that is incredibly important because the Ombudsman is the public’s watchdog. Giving the Ombudsman the role in a private prison that he or she would have in a public prison is critically important. The second of Rick Barker’s Supplementary Order Papers reinstates the role of the Auditor-General; that is important for the same reasons as reinstating the Ombudsman. The third of Rick Barker’s Supplementary Order Papers which we will support prohibits the Government entering into a contract for more than 3 years or into one that guarantees rights of renewal. That is absolutely critical. 
This bill is not supported on this side of the House. We know from previous experience that it does not work; in fact it will be more expensive. More taxpayer money will go into the incarceration of prisoners if the prisons are managed by the private sector. We know that because of the advice that was presented by the Department of Corrections. It says that the Auckland Central Remand Prison under private management from 1 July 2004 to 30 June 2005 had an all-inclusive cost of $57280 per prisoner. During that same period of time remand prisoners held in public prisons cost $50208 each to hold. So the public sector was significantly cheaper per prisoner over the same period of time. How did the Auckland Central Remand Prison compare after it was brought back under public management? It was still cheaper than it was under private management at a cost of $55853 per prisoner per year. It does not make sense. It will not be cheaper; it will be more expensive. This is another way for the National Government to channel the money of hard-working taxpayers into the private sector. 
Hon Clayton Cosgrove 
: And overseas! 
CHRIS HIPKINS 
: And to the overseas private sector because it is very unlikely that any New Zealand firms will do this work. This money will go from hard-working taxpayers to Australian American or Canadian corporate companies. It will go out of New Zealand. It will not do anything to reduce offending or to make our communities safer. Anyone listening to National ACT and the Maori Party would think that the private management of prisons will somehow miraculously make everyone much safer. It will not make any difference; if anything it could make the situation significantly worse. 
The debate about the privatisation and contract management of prisons is the wrong debate to be having. We should be talking about how we reduce the number of people who end up in prison in the first place. 
Paul Quinn 
: What are your credentials? 
CHRIS HIPKINS 
: I tell Mr Quinn that I—as opposed to him—actually managed to get elected in the Hutt Valley where we host the biggest prison in the country. The people of the Hutt Valley sent the carpetbagger from Wellington City well on his way. They did not want a bar of Paul Quinn. I will not listen to a word that Paul Quinn says on the private management of Rimutaka Prison. 
I tell him another thing. When we surveyed the constituents of Rimutaka and asked them what they thought about the contract management of Rimutaka Prison 67 percent were opposed to it. Those are the people Mr Quinn fraudulently purports to represent. The people of the Hutt Valley do not want Rimutaka Prison to be put into private management which is exactly what this bill would allow. It would allow Mr Quinn’s colleague Judith Collins to hock off the management of Rimutaka Prison to the private sector—to Australian American and Canadian firms—and to transfer the money of hard-working Kiwi taxpayers to offshore corporates rather than putting that money into the rehabilitation of prisoners and into crime prevention. 
That is what we should be worried about. The debate should be about how we can prevent people going to prison in the first place. We would not need more prisons if we did that. We will not do that by for example cutting the resources that are provided to the Police as National is doing. We rely on the police to help us keep our communities safe and to prevent offending. We would not do the things National is doing such as cutting police cars. That is a critical part of it. We should be focused on how we prevent offending and how we can keep our communities safe not how we make more money for the private sector out of the incarceration of prisoners. 
I come back to the point I raised at the beginning which my colleague Clayton Cosgrove raised about accountability. It is not at all surprising that the Government wants to shirk responsibility considering the long list of prison escapes assaults and deaths that have occurred on Judith Collins’ watch as the Minister of Corrections. That is one of the reasons why National wants to shirk responsibility by pushing it off to the private sector: so the Minister can stand up in the House and say that she does not know anything about it as it is a matter to raise with the private sector operator. 
The other concern I have is that when a profit-making company has the authority to restrict the basic civil liberties of ordinary Kiwis it leaves the system open to abuse. Profit motives could supersede the safety of the public of staff and of inmates. I think we should all be very concerned about that. There will be no incentive for private companies to report any failings at their prisons because they would be less likely to be awarded contracts or have them renewed. It will not lead to the innovation and the raising of standards that people talk about. In fact it will do the opposite. It will lead to prisons covering up mistakes so that they can have their contracts renewed. It will lead to them cutting corners so that their Australian American and Canadian owners can make more profits. This bill will not make New Zealanders any safer; it will boost the profits of the private sector. It is an ideological bill based on National’s fundamental view that the private sector has the best people to do it. We do not agree with that. We think this is a role for the State.