Davis KelvinHon KELVIN DAVIS (Minister of Corrections): Thank you Madam Chair. I was going to allow the questions to accrue because we are running out of time but that's fine. Look first of all I'd like to acknowledge the hard work that all of our corrections officers do. There's some 10000 staff. They work in one of the most difficult and dangerous environments in the country. They go to work every day and I agree they do not expect and no one should expect to be assaulted on the job. Sadly it is part of the nature of the environment they work in but that is not acceptable. No assault is acceptable. I don't expect anybody to get away with assaulting a corrections officer. I expect everybody who assaults a corrections officer to be held to account and I just want to take the opportunity to thank all of our corrections officers for the wonderful work they do in helping to keep New Zealand safe. So in the annual review the chief executive Jeremy Lightfoot I believe addressed these questions very well. It is really important to note that serious assaults have remained static for the last four or five years so those are the worst of the worst. I would rather see those numbers drop obviously. I don't want to see or hear or have any reports of any corrections officer being seriously assaulted—I don't want to hear any reports of them being assaulted at all. It is important to note though that there are a number of reasons that we're seeing increased violence in our prisons. One is the increased number of gang members. Now when I was in Opposition the prison population was sky-rocketing. I said at the time that all we do when we allow the prison population to grow is allow gangs to recruit more—it was basically university for gangs. That was one of the reasons why we said as a Government that one of our goals is to safely reduce the prison population. We couldn't financially afford to keep building American-style mega-prisons every three years but socially we could not allow that to happen. So we cannot dissociate the growth in gang members in prisons from the growth of gang members out in the community. The second point is the increase in meth out in the communities. We know that the growth of meth in the communities is sky-rocketing and we can't expect it not to have an impact on what is going on in prisons because we know that 90 percent of people in prisons over the course of their lives have a drug and alcohol or a mental health issue. So for those people who are on meth out in the communities that will also flow on into their behaviour in prisons and it impacts on the way they behave there. Also the remand population is growing. It is up at around about 37 percent. Simeon Brown: What are you doing about it? Hon KELVIN DAVIS: Now anybody who knows prisons knows that those people on remand they're a lot more agitated and there is less certainty for them as compared to those who are sentenced. So we are trying to get the remand population down. The member asks what we are doing about it. Well as we know there have been a number of strategies put in place over the last few years to help to address this. There have been for example stab-resistant vests deployed. There is a whole lot of training that has gone on and there have been a number of things but also unions and Corrections have been working together on a plan. The plan has been put in front of me. Simeon Brown: What's the plan? Tell us the plan. Hon KELVIN DAVIS: Well the plan is here. It has been put in front of me. I'd like to congratulate both Corrections and the unions for working together on that plan because it is important that unions and Corrections do work together to address these issues. Can I just touch on a number of other things as well. First of all I just want to congratulate again Corrections on the work they have done throughout COVID. Now it is a testimony to the fact that COVID did not grab hold in our prisons. If you look to overseas jurisdictions there were a number that had COVID. The work that our corrections system did to prevent—there was a case of COVID in the prisons but it didn't spread because of the work that Corrections had done. Hōkai Rangi is on track to achieve our short-term actions. It is an ambitious strategy to effect real intergenerational change. It is about working in true partnership between the Crown and Māori and it's something that we need to continue to support.