Barker Rick: Corrections (Contract Management of Prisons) Amendment Bill — In Committee Speaker Recalled In Committee Third Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Barker Rick: Corrections (Contract Management of Prisons) Amendment Bill — In Committee Speaker Recalled In Committee Third Reading 
[Sitting date: 24 November 2009. Volume:659;Page:8078. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Hon RICK BARKER (Labour) 
: 
 Seldom does this House get bills before it that are completely ideologically driven. The Corrections (Contract Management of Prisons) Amendment Bill is one of those rare bills. It is completely ideologically driven. There are no good reasons for supporting this bill; in fact all of the evidence is to the contrary. 
The right wing has as its philosophy cutting taxes privatising contracting out and deregulation. This Government is displaying all of the characteristics of an extreme right-wing view. This bill is one of those displays as it is about contracting out. The Law and Order Committee heard in submissions on the bill that the annual cost per prisoner to the public of operating the Auckland Central Remand Prison as a private prison was $33900 but the cost when the State ran it was $32000. As privately running it meant an increase in cost the committee was left wondering over and over again why we would do so. We heard no good reason other than simply ideology. When we look around the world at experiences in the United States Canada and Britain we see that all of the evidence shows that private prisons do not work. 
The second very important point is that we are considering contracting out one of the most powerful and fundamental rights that this Parliament takes upon itself which is to incarcerate its citizens. The executive arm of Government does not do that. The judiciary does not do it as of right. This Parliament sets the laws this Parliament gives the judiciary the power to put people in prison and deprive them of their liberty and this Parliament elects an executive to administer the prisons that undertake that work. It is not the executive that delegates power from the Minister of Corrections to the Chief Executive of the Department of Corrections; it is this Parliament. 
This matter brings us to several of the amendments that the Labour Opposition is moving. We have put forward three Supplementary Order Papers that would ensure that Parliament has direct scrutiny of the operation of prisons. The Government has put forward this bill on a “trust us we know what we’re doing” basis. It is saying that the chief executive of the Department of Corrections under the observation of the department’s own auditors will supply us with sufficient good information. Well I do not accept that at all. This Parliament has an Officer of Parliament in the form of the Controller and Auditor-General because it does not have complete faith in the audits that executives may choose to take. Some people think that once there has been an audit that is it all is done. But several names show the failures of auditors: Enron WorldCom and Arthur Andersen LLP. All of those firms were thoroughly audited yet collapsed and crashed spectacularly. The paperwork was perfect. That shows that independent scrutiny is important. 
One of the amendments we are moving Supplementary Order Paper 88 will give the Office of the Controller and Auditor-General the authority to go into prisons and ask directly for information. The select committee considered this matter and received advice that the existing powers are sufficient for the Office of the Controller and Auditor-General but Labour’s view is that the powers still leave the office at arms length with no direct ability to investigate for itself. One has to ask why this is. The answer is simple: the Department of Corrections driven by the ideology of the current Government wants to contract out prisons. If it does so it will inevitably contract them out to foreign companies from Australia the United States Britain—you name it. How this export of New Zealand dollars will be good for New Zealand I do not know. The Government has not explained this yet but no doubt the Minister of Corrections Judith Collins will tell us how the export of profits from our prisons is good for New Zealand. I can see no logical argument that would demonstrate that. 
The second thing is that these will be privately run institutions. Companies that run them under contract will not be subject to the scrutiny of the select committee and will not be subject to the direct scrutiny of this Parliament. We will give them the power to hold people in prison and deprive them of their liberty and we are expected to believe that we can trust them to do everything well. Well I do not believe that because the committee heard from submitters that figures had been massaged. Staff who were on the job in private prisons testified to the committee that they massaged figures to suit their employers—that is what they wanted—and to suit the administration of the day. I simply do not trust this Government with these matters. I believe very strongly that the Opposition and Parliament should have the ability to scrutinise these activities. That is why Labour is moving an amendment to ensure that the Office of the Controller and Auditor-General can on its own initiative if it so chooses go into private prisons interview staff and go through all the details itself rather than relying on the advice of the Department of Corrections or its auditors. 
We also believe as shown by our Supplementary Order Paper 87 that this amendment should apply to the Ombudsman as well. The argument has been put that the Ombudsman can get access to this information but again it can do so only indirectly; it cannot get it directly on its own motion. We believe that that is a weakness. 
The third amendment put forward by the Labour Opposition Supplementary Order Paper 86 will restrict the length of contracts. We are very mindful that we are dealing with public money. This is not the money of the Department of Corrections and it is not the money of the Minister; it is taxpayers’ money. The Opposition is very concerned to ensure that the money put into these contracts is well spent. We do not want to bind future Parliaments by having prison contracts that run for 12 20 or 25 years. We believe that the next Government that comes in in 3 years’ time must be able to examine such contracts to see whether they suit that particular Government. The contracts are hardly likely to suit it because the department’s own figures show that on every measure contracted prisons are more expensive to run than publicly run prisons. The American experience shows that they are more expensive and run worse than those run directly by the State. The Canadians experienced this and got rid of private prisons because they were poor performers. The British got rid of them also because they were poor performers. They do not work. 
If this Parliament gives power to the judiciary to deprive people of their liberty and gives power to the executive to hold people in our prisons then as a fundamental principle it should have the right to inspect and scrutinise that work directly. If a prison is run by a private company we will not have that power. The power will be held by the private company and we will not have the ability to haul the company before the select committee to interrogate it. We can talk to the Department of Corrections but of course the department and the Minister will have a vested interest in ensuring that the figures look good. They will work with staff to massage the figures as we have already been told by people who have worked in privately run prisons. They made sure that those prisons looked good—that is exactly what they did. 
Nothing we have heard so far justifies this legislation other than ideology. It is ideologically driven because all of the facts stand in opposition to it. It is ideologically driven because National believes in contracting out. There is no justification for it at all. 
If members look at the legislation that has been put forward they will see that it states in new section 199 to be inserted by clause 5 that in the contracted prison standards are to be “no lower” than in public prisons. The Minister in the chair says that the privately run prisons will all be better than public prisons. Well why would one not state in the legislation that contracted prisons must always perform better than publicly run prisons? Of course National will not write legislation to that effect because it cannot deliver on it. The only restriction on our prisons from doing better is a lack of resources. The people who run our prisons are very able very capable and very innovative and they will do better if we give them resources in every particular regard in terms of holding people in prison. The restriction on them has always been by way of resources. 
This legislation not only is ideologically driven but also lacks ambition. It lacks ambition because National wants to see privately run prisons do only no worse than those in the public sector. This lack of ambition will be at a cost to the taxpayer. Every figure that the Law and Order Committee received shows that privately run prisons were more expensive than State prisons. There is no question about that. National members of the committee tried to get figures to show that privately run prisons were better but they could get none—not one example of how they were better. The world experience shows that contract prisons are worse and inferior to those run by the State.