Ardern Jacinda: Public Safety (Public Protection Orders) Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeArdern Jacinda: Public Safety (Public Protection Orders) Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 02 December 2014. Volume:702;Page:1011. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]JACINDA ARDERN (Labour):I just really want to pose a couple of questions along the lines of Part 2 which is substantively a procedural administrative and miscellaneous section to the bill. It does go into some detail in Part 2 under clause 97 around the reports that are to be provided to the review panel for the purposes of reviewing a public protection order. This is I think an important clause given that we have only just recently debated as a select committee at the Justice and Electoral Committee the information that is provided to parole boards as a matter of course when considering a parole. It is a useful comparison to make I think because although this schedule sets out information that should be provided to a review panel it states under clause 97(f) in Part 2 that this includes “any further or supplementary reports requested by the review panel to be provided by any person including the chief executive the manager of the prison or the residence in which the person is detained and any health assessor”.The issue that we have discovered when it comes to reports provided to the Parole Board and would likewise be an issue with the review panel is that you know what you know. You can request information that you know might be available but for instance we have seen with the Parole Board that orders that are made in a civil regime were not routinely being provided to the Parole Board. A privacy agreement under the Judicature Act I believe it is is going to allow an agreement between the Ministry of Justice and the Parole Board to ensure that actually rather than having to request information it is provided as a matter of course. This may not be an issue when it comes to the review panel. I have not spent enough time looking at it but it is just something I would flag with the Minister of Justice. When we do have a case of requiring a review panel to ask for information we actually need to put the responsibility on those who hold the information to provide what they consider to be important because it is very difficult to make a direct request for information you do not know exists.I also want to just briefly ask a couple of questions on some other functional parts of the bill such as how the residences will be established and who will be employed to run them. Is it anticipated by the Government given that we are likely to have only five to 12 offenders held under this legislation that there will be the establishment of simply one residence on prison grounds; if so has consideration been given to which prison grounds that would be and what effect that would have on the footprint of the prison ground? Obviously some of our more modern prison facilities have been constructed in such a way that there are work programmes on site and various other rehabilitation programmes. To what degree would that be interrupted by having to partition off a piece of land in order to allow one of these residences to be established? Could the Minister perhaps share whether or not there has been any specific thought given to one site or multiple sites?Also for instance if there is one site that obviously would save a significant amount of money. Cost based on the regulatory impact statement was a consideration for the Government. I want to know whether or not having one site would breach any of the policies that are held by corrections around allowing offenders to try to be as close as possible to family. If for instance they have served their sentence in an Auckland prison but actually the one site in which these residences are constructed is in Christchurch I want to know whether or not we are going to have any ongoing issues with that given that this is a civil regime rather than part of a punishment as it were.Equally obviously there are some issues in clause 100. It talks about establishing residence managers. I am wondering whether or not these will be Department of Corrections staff because it states that a person must not perform any functions under the Corrections Act while that person is a residence manager. So obviously it is stipulated here that they will not have powers as given by the Corrections Act but is it anticipated that they will have the same degree of training that a corrections officer or staffer would or would they be for instance more in line with a social work qualification? What threshold test would we like them to meet because obviously a corrections officer or staff member has a particular set of thresholds that they must meet?I also wonder given that this is not strictly going to be considered in the same way that a regular corrections facility is whether or not the same powers of inspection that are held by a member of Parliament for instance will apply. That is the ability under the Corrections Act for us at any time to visit a corrections facility. Will that power under the Corrections Act apply to the residences for us to at any point visit in order to inspect and ensure conditions are appropriate and that the legislation is being met? Will that apply to these residences in the same way? I think that is an important point. We provide an inspectorate function particularly given that this regime is not intended to be the same as a prison. Making sure those checks and balances are in place is important. That may have already been considered and my apologies if that has been stipulated because I see that during the debate on Part 1 actually there was some discussion around Parliament being provided with reports on those who are covered by these public orders. So I am equally interested as to whether or not we have that ongoing role of inspection.I also would like to know whether or not the residence would be covered by our public corrections management. Will these residence managers be contracted out? Would we see the likes of Serco operating these residences or will they be held within the public regime? That is an important question for us on this side of the Chamber because we have very strong views about any form of our justice system even this element that falls within the civil regime being contracted out. We see it as a money-gathering exercise by third parties. We do not think it necessarily leads to any better outcomes. In the end we think the taxpayer ends up footing the bill.We have seen numerous examples where Serco has inappropriately managed the facilities that it has been running offshore. We have seen some debacles around the way facilities have been managed. Even in New Zealand we have our own examples where we have higher numbers of prisoner-on-prisoner assaults within our private prisons where they are not subjected to the same information-sharing regime so it is not as transparent. We would be interested to know whether or not it is the intention of the Government to contract out the management of these facilities in the same way it has some of our previously public prisons or even the prisons it is building such as Wiri. It would not surprise me if for instance the Government has already decided that the site where the residence will be is in one of these new facilities given that they are currently under construction and it would provide an ability to do that. That is a piece of information that I would like the Minister to clarify. I think it is incredibly important to the way these residences will operate in the future.