Hipkins Chris: Corrections (Contract Management of Prisons) Amendment Bill — In Committee Speaker Recalled In Committee Third Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Hipkins Chris: Corrections (Contract Management of Prisons) Amendment Bill — In Committee Speaker Recalled In Committee Third Reading 
[Sitting date: 24 November 2009. Volume:659;Page:8099. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
CHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka) 
: 
 I will come back to some of the technical provisions of the Corrections (Contract Management of Prisons) Amendment Bill. I have a number of points that I am hoping the Minister in the chair Judith Collins will address. I turn to new section 198 “Management of prisons under contract” set out in clause 5. The point I was beginning to raise when I so unfortunately ran out of time concerned the criteria the Minister will use when determining whether a prison should be put out to private contract and what process there would be around public consultation in doing so. 
The Minister mentioned in her speech that she envisaged that 10 percent of current prisons if I understood her correctly would be put out to contract management. I think that a number of New Zealanders who live in areas where there are existing prisons will be interested to know how the Minister will determine which prisons will be put out to contract and which ones will not be. The bill is completely silent on that point. The only thing that new section 198 does is allow the chief executive of the Department of Corrections to put any prison out to contract management with the Minister’s prior written consent. It does not give any criteria or establish any grounds upon which the Minister will give that consent. I think probably the Minister in the chair will be the Minister who would make those determinations so I will be very interested to hear exactly how she will do that. 
I represent the Rimutaka electorate which shares its name with the country’s largest prison Rimutaka Prison. The vast majority of constituents—78 percent I think—who completed the constituency survey that I put out were opposed to having a contract manager for Rimutaka Prison. Interestingly enough though there was some support amongst the local population for expanding Rimutaka Prison which surprised me. It is not that Rimutaka constituents are anti-prison—we appreciate that we need a prison—it is that the vast majority of residents are opposed to the idea that it should be run by a contractor. 
Hon Judith Collins 
: Not going to. 
CHRIS HIPKINS 
: The Minister is not going to do that. I wonder whether for the sake of the residents of my electorate the Minister may stand up to take a brief call and put that on the record of the House. The Minister has at least indicated to me before all these witnesses that she is not going to put out Rimutaka Prison to private contract. I am very heartened by that and I thank her. But I imagine that every other area in the country that has a prison will want to know whether their prison could be put out to private contract. New section 198 is very silent on that point. I am pleased that the Minister has obviously thought about whether Rimutaka Prison would be put out to private contract but I would quite like to hear about the other prisons in the country. 
I turn to new section 199(1)(c)(ii) set out in clause 5. It talks about “sufficient suitable staff members to enable the contractor to carry out the contractor’s statutory and contractual obligations in relation to the prison;”. Obviously the Minister will be involved in determining what goes into these contracts when she is dealing with the chief executive who will have the primary responsibility. One of the questions that I have is whether she would envisage for example minimum staffing levels being in a contract. If hypothetically Rimutaka Prison were to be contracted out—and I accept the Minister’s word that she will not do that—the people in my electorate would want to know that any private contractor of Rimutaka Prison had some specified minimum staffing levels that it had to meet. Obviously the safety of the people who work in the prison and the safety of the people in the community around the prison is very much dependent on the number of staff who work in the prison. I would like to know a little more from the Minister as to how she envisages the requirement under the provisions of that new section being put into practice. 
I turn to new section 199(3) set out in clause 5 which is basically a catch-all provision for any other provisions that the chief executive and the contractor see fit. The bill provides a fairly comprehensive range of criteria that any contractor will have to cover. I wonder whether this section is necessary and if necessary what types of clauses and provisions the Minister envisages being captured by it. 
The final point I raise concerns new section 199B set out in clause 5 which limits the liability of the Crown in relation to the contractor. In particular this section provides that the Crown is entitled to be indemnified by the contractor.