Collins Judith: Financial Review Debate — In Committee 
Collins Judith: Financial Review Debate — In Committee 
[Volume:653;Page:2438] 
Hon JUDITH COLLINS (Minister of Corrections) 
: 
 When we took over the Department of Corrections we were left with somewhat of a mess in some areas. This department had five Labour or lackey Ministers in the corrections portfolio over those 9 years. Frankly there is a roll-call of shame. I understand from the department that there was a general feeling that things did not really need to change because staff outlived their Ministers. Well we have news for anyone who holds that view. 
I have read the Law and Order Committee’s financial review of the department and I noticed that a very large transcript of the evidence is contained in it. I cannot see anything there to suggest that the Hon Clayton Cosgrove or anyone else in the Labour Party really seemed to care very much about what had happened in the department during the term of the financial review. The entire transcript seems to be nothing much more than a case of the Labour members trying to make something of the fact that I actually require accountability in the department and that the department is delivering on it. 
Hon Clayton Cosgrove 
: You stomped around but you didn’t get any accountability. 
Hon JUDITH COLLINS 
: The member is making all sorts of comments about stomping and he has previously said “strutting”. Well I do not stomp and I do not strut but he does. 
The report of the Auditor-General was extremely damaging. It said that despite all of the assurances that Phil Goff the previous Minister and the current Leader of the Opposition had made to the coroner’s office and to everybody else—to the public and to this House—the recommendations had not been implemented. There are 20 recommendations from the Auditor-General. In essence those recommendations say to the department that it must follow its own procedures. So what we have had to pick up is a mess. To be fair the department had been given an awful lot more work to do without the proper funding and resourcing to do it. As late as September last year after the department had all the responsibility for community sentences forced upon it it had an emergency situation on resourcing and what was Phil Goff’s reply? One might wonder—there was no reply. He did not even acknowledge that that request had gone through. It is appalling to read this financial review and to see that so much that had been promised had not been done and certainly that the department had not been properly directed by a Minister who was not really engaged in being a Minister. 
The department tells me that not one Labour Minister ever attended a graduation ceremony for corrections officers. Not one of them took a personal interest in what was happening in that department and not one of them ever required the department to change its culture. That is what we have inherited. 
The member has made all sorts of comments about escapes and those sorts of things but since I have been the Minister there have been three escapes from corrections facilities—three escapes. In the 4½ months before then there were nine. That figure has kept the member very quiet has it not? He does not really want to talk about that. 
When I have been going around the prisons and asking prison officers what is needed they have talked to me about prisoner and officer safety about some of the problems they have and about the regulations that need to be sorted out. I have listened to that and some of those proposals are being proceeded with now because this Government listens to what departmental officers are saying. 
When it comes to issues about rehabilitation and reoffending the statistic is that about 70 percent of prisoners reoffend within 4 years of leaving prison. I do not think that any Government should be proud of that statistic and particularly not a Labour Government that was in office for 9 years. I do not think that Labour members should be proud of the fact that 8500 prisoners are locked up right now at this moment or that the corrections system has to deal with 40000 community sentences. I think it is appalling that not enough has been done in terms of rehabilitation. 
I am extremely pleased that under this National-led Government we are working with the Maori Party. We have Dr Pita Sharples as the Associate Minister of Corrections and I am talking to him about what he is doing. He is addressing the Maori reoffending and rehabilitation issues. I think that it is incredibly important to bring Maori into the debate on this issue because 51 percent of our prisoners are Maori. Labour had 9 years to deal with this issue and all it did was to fill up the jails.