Garrett David: Corrections (Contract Management of Prisons) Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Garrett David: Corrections (Contract Management of Prisons) Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
[Sitting date: 17 November 2009. Volume:659;Page:7734. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
DAVID GARRETT (ACT) 
: 
 I start by saying that last Friday I had the opportunity to visit the maximum security section at what is now known as Auckland prison but used to be known as “Pare Max”. One could not say I had the pleasure of doing so because as Mr Cosgrove and others have said no one in their right mind would really want to go and live in C Block as it is now. I had several impressions of the place aside from the obvious. One of them was of how professional the staff were. They were not the inhumane brutes whom some have portrayed prison staff to be. They were clearly compassionate and professional—some might say too compassionate. I had good talks with several of them. They were not the opponents of private prisons that Mr Cosgrove talks to—Mr Hanlon and his mates get intimidated supposedly by someone speaking the obvious—but just ordinary guys. 
Hon Clayton Cosgrove 
: You threatened him. 
DAVID GARRETT 
: Oh yeah I threatened him. Hanlon was threatened because I mentioned the obvious fact having sat there in the Law and Order Committee and heard the evidence that Ms Turei just gave us that Mr Hanlon and his mates would not get a job in the private prison. 
Hon Clayton Cosgrove 
: You threatened his colleagues. 
DAVID GARRETT 
: I ask Mr Cosgrove whether that big tall joker was scared of me. I had a chance to talk to the ordinary prison officers up there—half a dozen of them men and women—and they were great people. I was very very impressed with what I saw. So I wonder why there is a feeling of such threat about the idea of a private prison. 
I walked into the Chamber towards the end of Ms Turei’s speech and I wondered whether she and I had been in the same select committee room because some of what she said simply parroted what those prison officers who were obviously union goons were there to say. Without any substantiation at all they accused a private prison operator of falsifying records. I will go through it again: shredding documents sacking people so they could not face disciplinary tribunals etc. Well in another life I was a lawyer and I say that in order to substantiate those charges—those very very serious charges—one would need to have evidence. We have not seen any of that except in the sacred protection of this House or in a select committee room. So I am very sceptical about that. I wonder why the union is so frightened of having competition in prison management. Ms Turei and the Labour Party members simply ignore the facts. 
Mr Tanzcos who used to sit over there once said in this House I am told that even though he accepted that on every measure—whether it be suicide violence on officers violence on offenders or whatever else it might be—when the Auckland Central Remand Prison was run privately it did better than the public prisons he was still opposed to it. That is still the “criminal apologist” attitude over there: those members are opposed to prisons being run privately. Just as the sky will fall in tomorrow because of global warming or climate change or whatever it is called now they say private equals bad. It does not matter what the evidence is; they say private equals bad. That is just not so. 
The Maori Party to my left has come in for a bit of stick from Ms Turei and I imagine from Mr Cosgrove as well about its support for the idea of privately run prisons. Well in my view that is a courageous move on the part of the Maori Party members. They have said—and I will be honest; I doubt whether they are right—that iwi can run prisons better than they are being run and that they can turn round the sorry statistics that show that 14 percent of our population is 60 percent or something of our prisoners. The Maori Party has said that iwi-run groups can do that better. I say we should give them a go. If they can do it better who can complain? I ask Mr Cosgrove whether he is frightened of iwi groups tendering successfully for a private prison and getting good outcomes. Is he scared of that? 
Hon Clayton Cosgrove 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. Firstly I am not scared. Secondly I seek leave to table a document in which Mr Garth McVicar chief executive of the Sensible Sentencing Trust and Mr Garrett’s mentor opposes what Mr Garrett is supporting today. 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Eric Roy) 
: I am going to put the leave but I say members do know that it is discourteous to break up a speech. [ 
Interruption 
] I am telling the member that I will put the leave. [ 
Interruption 
] The member should not speak to the Chair in that manner. I will put the leave. Members ought to be aware that leave should be put at the end of a speech. Leave is sought to table a document. Is there anyone opposed to that course of action? There is not. 
Document by leave laid on the Table of the House. 
DAVID GARRETT 
: I would be quite happy for Mr Cosgrove to table anything from Mr McVicar who by the way is not my mentor or my sponsor. I am not here as a member of the Sensible Sentencing Trust as Mr Cosgrove has sneeringly observed from time to time. I am here as a member of the ACT Party and as a proud member of the ACT Party. 
But I do not subscribe to the kind of nonsense that Mr Tanczos said: that even if we have fewer suicides less violence fewer attacks and literacy classes that do much better than those in public prisons we should still oppose privately run prisons. That is idiocy—utter idiocy. So I commend the Maori Party and I really hope that iwi management will work. Overseas evidence suggests that it is unlikely to work but I hope that it has something to offer. 
In any event I do not see what is so bad and so scary about prisons being open to private competition especially when the very little evidence we have of what happened here is overwhelmingly positive. There is a weird fixation on the fact that no one should possibly make money from incarceration. Well I just do not get it. I just do not get it. If an organisation can meet the same standards as public prisons which privately managed prisons will have to meet and if that organisation can achieve better results than the public prisons which hopefully it can then who cares if someone makes some money? Who cares? I do not. I do not and our party does not. 
We take pleasure in supporting the Corrections (Contract Management of Prisons) Amendment Bill. It might not work; let us see. But we will certainly be voting for it and following its outcome with interest. Thank you.