Clendon David: General Debate 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Clendon David: General Debate 
[Sitting date: 26 September 2012. Volume:684;Page:5674. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
DAVID CLENDON (Green) 
: 
 I want to talk about a group of New Zealanders who have already been mentioned this afternoon by none other than our corrections Minister Anne Tolley. This is a group of people who have variously been called the forgotten victims of crime the orphans of justice and the unseen victims of the prison boom. I want to talk about the 20000-plus young New Zealanders who have one of their parents currently in prison. On any given day we have over 20000 young people in this situation and we are doing very little to meet their current needs—their very severe present-day needs—and we are doing arguably even less to try to secure for them a better and safer future and to steer them away from following the line of that parent who may be incarcerated. 
The Minister’s attention might have been brought to the  
New Zealand Herald 
 article. I do not know whether before seeing that article she knew that this week is actually Children of Prisoners Week and it is a good time to acknowledge the NGOs. There are groups like PILLARS—Nga Pou Whakahou—that work constantly and very hard and very effectively to try to provide services to these neglected kids and to try to mitigate some of the suffering of and burdens on those kids and their families. 
Before I talk more about that I must respond directly though to some of the comments the Minister made earlier. She was very thrilled to announce that she is saving $170 million on building this prison at Wiri. I am really fascinated by the arithmetic there. The Minister has told us that the total cost will be in the order of $840 million. Serco the private contractor that will run the prison has proudly announced to the British London Stock Exchange that it expects revenues of $30 million a year over 25 years. My arithmetic gives that a figure of $750 million of revenue leaving about $90 million to construct that prison. We know that the average cost of a prison is around $400000 per bed allowing that by the scale of the prison you can reduce that cost. Are we seriously expected to believe that that prison is to be built for $90 million? We would love the Minister to table the contract. Show us the numbers. Be a little transparent about what is actually going on in Wiri and the real cost to New Zealand—not only the social but the financial cost. 
The Minister was thrilled to note that her beloved private prison has been acknowledged as treating better the families and children who are visiting inmates. This Government has had within its power for 4 long years the ability to intervene in terms of the conditions facing visitors to prisons. Is it beyond its collective wit to realise that the application of some paint some toy boxes some colouring books and crayons for children could actually break some of the fear and some of the trauma these kids experience every time they walk into those very forbidding very hostile places? I have visited the prisons and I would encourage more members of the Government to do so. Visiting rooms have rows of plastic chairs bolted to the floor with no privacy and no provision for children. There is no distraction for them while their parents endeavour to maintain a relationship with one imprisoned partner. We know that on average for a couple where one of them enters prison typically the man the relationship might survive for some 18 months. Anybody sentenced to more than that is likely to come out to find their relationship is gone. The children have lost their father—or indeed their mother—and the mother has lost her partner and an income earner. This is an intolerable situation and it is unacceptable that the NGOs are doing a great deal more than Government agencies to actually remedy the situation that is confronting these young people. 
There are major differences in visiting policies from one prison to another. Why is it that a partner visiting a prisoner in one place has a very different experience from another? The very least we could do is improve the situation when these young people and their parents are visiting inmates. We do very little to protect the health and well-being of children of prisoners. We do very little to support their partners. We know that their educational outcomes will be way below optimal. We know that they will suffer serious health and psychological health traumas. We know through all the evidence that comes to us that these are some of the most disadvantaged young people in New Zealand. We are doing very little for them. It is shameful. We need to do more. Kia ora.