Power Simon: Corrections Amendment Bill (No 2) — First Reading 
Power Simon: Corrections Amendment Bill (No 2) — First Reading 
[Volume:645;Page:14377] 
SIMON POWER (National—Rangitikei) 
: 
 The Corrections Amendment Bill (No 2) is the Government’s first public admission that all is not well in the Department of Corrections and that substantial moves have to be undertaken to amend the Corrections Act 2004 in order to address many of the issues that have been raised with the Government by the National Party in Opposition over the last 2½ years. This bill is an attempt to deal with problems in the Department of Corrections that have otherwise been minimised and denied by the Government up until this point. Many of the matters the Minister raised in his first reading speech of course have been denied at various times by various Ministers of Corrections as being problems or issues in the prison system—denied not only through the media but in this House during question time over the last 2 to 2? years. 
National has indicated to the Government that it will support this legislation going to a select committee for its first reading for two reasons. Firstly many of the problems that this legislation purports to deal with would not even have come into the public arena had National not raised them. Secondly this bill will give the Law and Order Committee an excellent opportunity to look at issues of contraband prisoner communication visitor contraband and the like in our prison system. I know that Martin Gallagher who is a firm but fair chairperson of that select committee will allow wide-ranging evidence to be brought to the committee during the discussion of this particular bill and I look forward to the Corrections Association various staff members and others coming before the committee to tell members about the practical nature of some of the issues that have been raised. 
As the Minister said the bill amends the Corrections Act in order to create new search detection drug-testing and offence provisions to help to control contraband. That is a problem the previous Minister of Corrections stood in this House week after week and denied was a problem. It is a problem that the Chief Executive of the Department of Corrections has made several statements on—in particular in relation to staff-assisted contraband and so-called corruption. It was a problem the chief executive denied saying that the figures in this area represented “a few bad apples” and “We are probably talking about five in the whole organisation”. Well the referral of this bill to the Law and Order Committee will give an opportunity to test out those statements and to gather evidence that will help us to determine whether these issues need the type of approach that the Government is offering or whether in fact we need to be tighter than the approach the Government is offering. 
We will remember of course that these problems are not theoretical. We know for example that upon the release of Rachel Namana she claimed that whilst she was in prison she had had access to a range of drugs including P and to a cellphone. We know that in 2006 a prostitute was allegedly found in the grounds of Rimutaka Prison after a cellphone was used. We know that in 2006 at least two inmates from Christchurch Prison were allegedly sending obscene text messages to others. Yet the Government told the House that those matters were isolated one-off incidents and now Phil Goff has stood in this House and been quite prepared to tell the country that the issues are serious enough to warrant amendments to the Corrections Act in order to bring in new wide-ranging powers. 
In fact the question that the select committee needs to examine during the course of considering this bill is the sources of the contraband. Is it just the visitors to our prison system? Is it indeed as has been alleged from time to time the staff in our prison system? Those will be issues that a diligent select committee would look at thoroughly before recommending the implementation of a further course of action to the House. 
We know for example that the number of prisoners testing positive for P in our prison system has increased steadily from 35 such identifications in 2001 to 139 in the 2006-07 financial year. We know that the Department of Corrections in its own report in 2006 said that its Identified Drug User programme “provides little scope for prisoners identified as drug users to mitigate their actual demand for drugs” and that “a significant amount of drug use in prisons goes undetected.” We are not talking about a small problem here. We are talking about a problem that after 8 years of denial head-shaking and counter-accusations the Government has finally realised it can no longer ignore relating to issues that the Parliament has been raising with all six Ministers of Corrections since Labour took office at the end of 1999. We see today the Government finally realise that the polling it is doing shows it is being clobbered in the areas of law and order our justice system and the prison system. It is a problem that it has finally had to admit to and bring legislation to this House to allegedly deal with. 
I note that the Minister is talking about a pretty short time frame for the report back of the bill. So I will be interested to see that the chairperson of the select committee does not hurry this matter unnecessarily and that we all get an opportunity to deal with this legislation as we would like to. 
One of the most interesting and complicated provisions or components of the bill will be the use of advanced technology to ensure the use of cellphones and the like is blocked so they are unable to be used from within our prison system. We will spend some time no doubt in the select committee on looking at the issue of disabling and disrupting transmissions within prison boundaries and stopping unauthorised electronic communications. The Minister is right when he says that written communications should be treated no differently from oral communications or indeed text communications as part of that package. The use of cellphone jamming will be one issue that no doubt the committee will want a full technological explanation of. We do not want that technology to work only in some prisons or worse still in some parts of one prison. That would be an inadequate approach to that issue. 
As I said National will support this bill at its first reading largely because it attempts to deal with issues that this party has been raising with the six Ministers of Corrections since 1999 and particularly in the last 2 to 3 years where we have failed to get decent straightforward answers to some of the questions that have been raised. This bill will give us the opportunity in the select committee to put those questions to a wide variety of witnesses.