Faafoi Kris: Corrections Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Faafoi Kris: Corrections Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Sitting date: 13 February 2013. Volume:687;Page:7858. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
KRIS FAAFOI (Labour—Mana) 
: 
 Taloha ni Mr Chair. I would like to take a relatively quick call on new Part 3 which is contained in Supplementary Order Paper 171 to the Corrections Amendment Bill which has been put forward by the Minister of Corrections. I want to reiterate that on this side of the House we do support our prisons being smoke-free and I want to outline our rationale for that too. 
I think Charles Chauvel has pointed to some concerns that he has around the retrospectivity of the new smoking part of this amendment bill but Labour does support smoke-free prisons. As I said in my previous contribution we think it is good for the overall health of the inmates and we do need to look at that as part of their rehabilitation. We need to try to get them back on—I guess the phrase could be—the straight and narrow by supporting prisons being smoke-free. We think that is a wise thing to do. We do have concerns about the way the Government previously introduced this measure. We did say that it should have been done legislatively. That was not done and we do have this Supplementary Order Paper before us. We do support also of course prison officers having a smoke-free workplace environment. 
I think at the outset when this measure was proposed by the Government there was some concern that it might cause a level of disquiet amongst the inmates. But it was introduced and I think on the whole—and I think people may have said this at the Law and Order Committee as a side issue to what was being proposed in the bill before this Supplementary Order Paper was introduced—the smoking ban in prisons to date has worked quite well. Any issues that people thought might arise—and I think they reasonably may have thought that given how closely prisoners guarded their cigarettes before the ban was in place—have not necessarily eventuated. I think kudos must have to go to the Department of Corrections for the way it has brought that in and some of the support it has given to the inmates as smoking was banned. 
I want to touch again on some of the politics of this. I think the Government will be very happy that this part is being debated at quarter to 10 because this has not been a good look for it. It has had to introduce this Supplementary Order Paper to make this change. When it made the change in another way the Labour Opposition warned that it should do it legislatively. I do have a certain amount of sympathy for the Minister in the chair the Minister of Corrections because she is not necessarily to blame for the fact that this Supplementary Order Paper has had to be introduced and that it has had to be done this way. It was the previous Minister of Corrections who did not heed some of the I guess you could call it opposition or suggestion from the Labour Party that it should be done legislatively and maybe kudos has to go to the Minister in the chair for bringing this measure to the Committee by way of a Supplementary Order Paper. Unfortunately we are not going to support it because of the way that it has eventuated and because we have concerns about other parts of the bill most notably the private management of our prisons and of course something in Part 1 around the change to the regime for strip-searching. 
In conclusion we want to just reiterate our support for smoke-free prisons. We are not happy that this is happening now considering that we did warn the Government much earlier on before these changes came in that it should do it by law. It did not and now it finds itself in the strange position of having to do it in a rather hasty manner and by way of a Supplementary Order Paper. We want to make sure that our prisons are safe and are good workplace environments especially for those prison officers who have to deal day to day with some of the issues that inmates can cause.