Nash Stuart; Tisch LindsaySTUART NASH (Labour—Napier): We have heard some fine words from that member Kanwaljit Singh Bakshi and the Minister of Corrections but what I would like to do is sort of put it in perspective. The way I will do that is by just putting the facts out there because what I think we have got on 23 September is quite a big choice in society: whether we want a benevolent and compassionate society with solutions and ideas and innovative ways to move forward or a divisive and rather punitive Government which we have here when it comes to the treating of the most vulnerable.Let me give you a couple of statistics if I may. It was the chief executive officer (CEO) of Corrections who told us this at the Law and Order Committee: 20000 New Zealanders every year enter a jail—20000 Kiwis. Of those 14000 are there for 6 months or longer. What he also told us was that 62 percent of prisoners who walk through a prison door—walk through the jail gate—have a mental health or addiction issue. What he also told us was that Corrections tests only 7000 a year. So it tests only 35 percent of all prisoners who walk through the gates and yet there are 8680 who are there for 6 months or longer.I said to the CEO the man in charge of the operations of Corrections: Mr Smith are you at least putting in place—is Corrections at least putting in place—the programmes and processes to give these prisoners a chance to at least be productive citizens when they come out of jail?". Do you know what he said? He said: "I don't think we're that ambitious." He said: "I don't think we're that ambitious." This is an admission that what we are doing with 20000 New Zealanders a year is locking them up leaving them in there—often they come out a little bit angrier a little bit madder or a little bit badder and we wonder why we have got recidivism rates going through the roof.Then we hear from the Minister that we have got 16 new alcohol counsellors in prisons. Now that is good news but it is only a start—16 new counsellors to cope with 8680 prisoners with a mental health and/or addiction problem. It is not even scratching the surface. What this Government has announced is over a billion dollars on a new prison. Between 2005 and 2015 the Corrections budget has gone from $526 million a year to nearly $1.5 billion a year. That is a billion-dollar-a-year increase over 10 years on Corrections. The question that I would like to ask is: do we want to live in a society that actually locks people up and throws away the key or do we want to live in a society where we at least deal with the issues that are facing our communities?I think that if we had spent the billion dollars we are about to spend on a jail and the extra billion dollars a year we are paying to Corrections—if we spend that money on education on mental health and our health services on community policing and on housing we would not need the prisons. We would not need these prisons because we would be dealing with those who are most vulnerable in our communities before they get to prison. That is why I say that a Labour-led Government actually has solutions apart from "let's lock 'em up and throw away the key." Spending another $1.3 billion on a jail when we should be spending $1.3 billion on houses on mental health on police on education—that is what I think New Zealanders want for a Government.We had the Minister of Corrections also say that victimisations had dropped. I do not know where she got that statistic from because in the last full year between 2015 and 2016 victimisations had increased by—the exact figure—11568. That is how much they had increased by. Assaults were up by 3308 sexual assaults were up by 214 robberies were up by 18 percent and there are burglaries up to $75000 a year. Let me talk about meth and I quote the Police: "New Zealand's vulnerability as a destination for methamphetamine shipments appears to be increasing." "The number of children found in clandestine labs or assessments has increased each year since 2012". But worse: "Despite the increase in seizures therefore the removal of methamphetamine from the market there appears to be no visible impact on the availability of methamphetamine." Unless we start investing in the processes and the resources to drive this out of our communities it is going to remain. We need a benevolent Government a compassionate Government; not a punitive one.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): Order! Sorry the member's time has expired."