Henare Tau: Corrections (Contract Management of Prisons) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Henare Tau: Corrections (Contract Management of Prisons) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:653;Page:2181] 
Hon TAU HENARE (National) 
: 
 For the last 10 years there has been a clamour for Maori to intervene and lead the crusade against the ever-increasing number of Maori incarcerated in Her Majesty’s prisons. The clamour and loud noises of those in our society who are of the centre-left or of the left persuasion are deafening. Also the likes of Michael Laws and all the other bigots—I suppose one could call them—continue to tell Maori to get off their backsides. 
Grant Robertson 
: You were voting for his bill last night. 
Hon TAU HENARE 
: Absolutely because the Corrections (Contract Management of Prisons) Amendment Bill is a good one and I am not a bigot. 
They continue to tell Maori to get off their backsides and say that they must show some leadership and do something about the ever-increasing crime and prison statistics. The likes of Tapu Misa and her ilk tell us that we cannot run prisons—or anything else for that matter. The inherent hypocrisy in all of these arguments is that if we want Maori in a community to show some leadership to show some way out of the mêlée that we are faced with then we should let those organisations that are equipped to do the job at least try to do it. In my mind it is undoubtedly clear that Labour continues to want to stymie Maori leadership. In doing so the onus of all these bad statistics is kept on Maori and not on the managers of those statistics. 
I hear about corruption and greed in the private system. Corruption and greed are not the sole domain of private prisons as we have seen in our own prisons over the last 24 months. Labour came up with the lame idea that inmates who have a whakapapa or a genealogical tie to a certain area should be moved up to that area. But Labour forgot about all of those who were born and bred in places like Auckland Wellington Christchurch and Dunedin. The whole argument about private prisons smacks of a double standard. In a time of recession—and if I might be so bold a time of depression—surely it is time for us to look at innovation rather than ideology. Surely it is time for us to be courageous instead of fearful with a will to try new ways of solving old problems. 
If the public Government-run prisons are so good then why are there so many problems in those prisons? People like Ngati Hine and Ngati Whatua o Orakei are not asking to run the world; they are asking to be part of a regime that may in fact help bring down the statistics that so many of us get up and talk about. 
 I will buy into the argument that the State should be the one and only agency to run the prisons on this proviso: that the State does a good job. But I ask whether it really matters who runs prisons as long as they are run properly as long as there is rehabilitation and on the other side of the coin as long as those inmates come out with a sense of remorse and of knowing that they have done something wrong and will not reoffend. I say to Labour that that must be a good thing for the inmates and also for the community. 
If everything has been tried in terms of those statistics then we should try something new. We are talking about statistics that go back quite some time. We are not talking about the numbers of Maori prisoners in just the last 12 months; we are talking about a very very long time. Increasingly the number has been on the upward rather than on the downward scale. I ask the opponents of this bill please to at least give it a chance and give it a try. From 2000 to 2005 we had private management of a prison—a remand centre in Auckland—and it showed that some arrangements could be made with local iwi authorities just as they can under our present system. This bill is not about the holus-bolus privatisation of the whole prison service. This is about letting it out for tender in a case by case scenario to those who think they can do the job. 
This bill is all about allowing people with ideas and innovation to try something new and different. We should not be slaves to old tired worn-out ideology. Those battles between Marx Engels and whomever else were fought and won a long time ago. The time now is for action innovation and new ideas. If we become slaves to ideology then the poor old people in our community who are scared about reoffending and the poor old inmates who never get a chance at rehabilitation will remain in those same little scared corridors. We will have failed them because we were too scared to cotton on to some new ideas. 
That is all this bill does: it allows people to have a shot at prison management. It does not say that it is the be-all and end-all; it says that it allows people to tender if they believe that they can do the job. I am sure that my own iwi affiliations in the north and in Auckland would jump at the chance to have a shot at bringing down the appalling prison statistics for our people. 
All I can say in conclusion is that this bill is about giving an opportunity. We should give those people a chance. That is all this bill does. It does not privatise every prison in New Zealand; it says to people out there that if they think they can do the job and make an impact then we will allow them to be part of that process. I say “Well done.” to the Minister of Corrections for bringing this bill to the House.