McLellan Tracey; Mitchell MarkDr TRACEY McLELLAN (Labour): Thank you Mr Chair. As I made the opening contribution and I prefaced the fact that I had several questions this is the first opportunity I've had since then to actually ask any of those questions so I do ask for your indulgence to move through the list. I haven't moved off the very first one yet but I do have some to ask.I'm not going to ask questions on this because although I do think that some nuance has been lost in the ability to sort of delve into them a little bit more—and I appreciate the fact that the Minister of Corrections will feel like he's answered the questions relating to Te Tiriti and he certainly has attempted to address it on several occasions now so I do appreciate that. However without asking a question I am going to make a couple of remarks before I move on. That is an acknowledgement that the Minister says—well he raised it and I'd like to come back to it; about the fact that Corrections has no control over who they deal with in the corrections system. I would like to reiterate what Tamatha Paul said that the recidivism rates for people who are incarcerated are so high that inevitably the Department of Corrections absolutely has control over who is going to come back through their doors. It is incumbent upon them to do anything they can to improve the recidivism rates by I think entrenching some legislative foundations to ensure that we get better outcomes.Minister Hōkai Rangi has been referenced on several occasions today. Whilst that's the operational means by which some of the good things that we hope would be done in the corrections system could be done as introduced by previous Minister the Hon Kelvin Davis I note that that that strategy runs from 2019 to 2024 which is this year. So can the Minister before we move on provide us with some details about what work is under way or what the timeline is given that we are more than halfway through 2024. Whilst we're consistently during this process today being told that operationally—the fact that we're removing gutting the reference to the Treaty out of the bill; operationally things can still happen. But the operational framework is on its last legs as well so it's not feeling like it's very robust or there's much grounding in what we know should be done. So can the Minister please provide us with some information about that?I'm particularly interested because whilst again the Minister will feel like he's addressed it and he has attempted to answer it on several occasions I don't feel particularly satisfied with the response in so far as I don't feel any further ahead as to why these provisions are being removed particularly because I look at advice that the Minister received in February this year from you know his departmental advice. It clearly sets out on several occasions benefit of having the Treaty provisions and the specific references that were grounded in that whole new section 6A inserted by clause 7 that's now being removed.So in lieu of not banging on a drum—that's probably done and dusted now as we've moved on—I would like the Minister though to turn his mind to page 10. When we look at replacement section 51 inserted by clause 11—and it may seem like a relatively simple clause it's looking at the fact that references to management plans are now changing to case management plans I presume providing a little bit more specificity about what that was. But when we look at replacement section 51(4) Each case management plan must be consistent with the resources available to the chief executive to manage the prisoner." As has been previously mentioned all the way through or several instances through this bill it's replete with examples of where resources are afforded or where the chief executive knows that resources are available. So I would like the Minister to reassure us at this stage the committee of the whole House stage that the case management plans aren't completely contingent on resources that it doesn't create a bit of a precedent in terms of how that interacts with every other aspect.As we go through—and I will have some further questions about how that relates then to the rehabilitative programme how it relates to the ability to therefore go up for parole and how it even relates for some of the reasons that can be made for ensuring that people are able to be transferred because the Minister has prefaced his opening statements about the fact that he's very proud of the fact that rehabilitation is supposedly a bit of a cornerstone of this bill and yet there's many many fish hooks I think in so far as the practical application.So it is incumbent upon this House because this is the only chance that we get to ask some of these very specific questions. Because things often sound good when high-level statements and proclamations are being made but there's some really really concerning parts of specific practical application here. So that is another thing I would like the Minister to turn his mind to if he could. As has been prefaced earlier by the Hon Dr Duncan Webb all the way through here it is contingent upon resources being available. This is just one example. I do intend or hope to intend to move on to provide several more.So I'm going to leave it at that and give the Minister an opportunity to get some specific advice or if he is able to answer about case management and resources.Actually I will ask one more question just because it took such a long time to get another one. As we move on I also note that another specific example is when we talked about replacement section 92C(2) and (2A) "Particular matters relating to imaging technology searches" inserted by clause 23 "(2) An image produced as a result of an imaging technology search for the purposes of detecting an unauthorised item must be disposed of within 24 hours." As I was reading this it immediately brought to mind as yet another example of how there's quite a lot of creep and increase in duty and staff duty within this bill. And yet we know that there's certainly been a cost saving exercise that's gone under way within the Department of Corrections. We know that there is no fat absolutely no fat in the back office. In fact you know that's been decimated quite heavily. I think you know all sorts of documents that the department and the Minister refer to rely on the fact that staff safety is a number one priority and yet you're adding quite a lot of duty. And it might not sound like large duties but the disposal of stuff the information gathering the intelligence cache that that's going to require be made does require extra resources.So in line with the case management question can you also using that information technology clause as an example talk us through how you are convinced how you're confident that adding all these extra duties doesn't overstretch an already overstretched department and doesn't result in a variety of negative outcomes?Hon MARK MITCHELL (Minister of Corrections): Yeah well first of all I just want to reassure the member that there's no fish hooks in the legislation at all. Yes she is right that the legislation is designed to make to make our corrections officers safer and to make their operations more efficient so they actually have got the time to be able to dedicate to things like case management and prisoner safety. It refers to resources because for a long time they've been operating under strength. In a service like corrections when you're operating under strength you have to start making trade-offs and you have to start making decisions in terms of the safety of your officers and the safety of the prisoners. But the good news is that in the last eight months we're now above the rate of attrition. They're doing very well with their recruiting campaign. Every month now I'm going to graduations where they're recruiting training and deploying up to 140 new corrections officers. So what that means is that those resources start to come back online. Those options start to become more available to them. They can just start delivering more rehabilitation programmes. So that is quite simply what the reference to resources is—"as resources allow"—because that is what will govern what they can actually deliver on a day-to-day basis."