Collins Judith: Budget Debate 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Collins Judith: Budget Debate 
[Sitting date: 12 June 2012. Volume:680;Page:2817. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Hon JUDITH COLLINS (Minister of Justice) 
: 
 I must say that was an awfully long 10 minutes. I thought about taking a point of order and questioning whether or not the clock had stopped but everybody is allowed to have their say in Parliament and that is a marvellous thing.  
This is a great Budget particularly when one looks around the world and sees what is happening elsewhere. When we look around we often like to compare ourselves with Australia. Of course in Australia they do mining and resources—the sorts of things the Opposition would not have us touch but it is happy to take the income that comes from them. But actually what this Budget has been able to do is to continue down the great path that the National-led Government along with our colleagues in the ACT Party United Future and the Maori Party has been able to deliver.  
I look at the law and order and justice areas—and they are the ones that I am most concerned with—and at what we have seen in a time when there has been a global financial crisis and a recession. We came into Government and the country had been in recession for the last three quarters. We were told that what would happen is that there would be an increase in crime that crime would go up that we would run out of prison beds and that we would be in a terrible situation. And we came in and we found that there had been these new prisons built by the previous Labour Government—and they are extremely flash I have to say; extremely flash—but it needed a lot of work to put those double bunks in and that seemed to sort out quite a few of our issues. 
 Then of course we brought in a private prison—private management—which seems to be fantastic really— 
Chris Hipkins 
: How many people have escaped from it? 
Hon JUDITH COLLINS 
: The member over there Mr Hipkins seems to have forgotten that there were two escapes from Waikeria Prison just the other day which of course is State run. Of course in the private sector when one of Serco’s prisoners escapes it costs them $150000. But nobody pays in the public sector.  
What we have seen is actually a situation where the crime rate has come down. It is now at the same level as it was in 1982—1982—and in amongst all of that we have also seen the prison population start to fall in a sustained way for the first time since the 1930s. So instead of Labour which was constantly having to catch up with more prison beds this Government has got the situation where we have now announced the closure of two prisons Wellington’s Mt Crawford prison and New Plymouth Prison which should never have been used for housing people in today’s world. We would not have had to use them if we had been left with enough beds by the previous Government. But anyway those are just some of the success stories.  
We can also say there are 600 more police on the beat—600 more front-line police. There is now DNA testing for serious offenders and there are tools to seize the proceeds of crime. That has been a great success. Serious criminals and repeat offenders are being kept behind bars longer with no bail or parole eligibility. It was this party—this party—along with our coalition partners United Future and the ACT Party that brought through the Search and Surveillance Act which should have been done years ago. It was first started in about 2007 but unfortunately some parties in this House decided they were going to play politics with this most important issue and were quite happy to leave the police out there unable to deal with methamphetamine dealers and the like. Shame on them for not taking the right stance.  
What we have seen though in amongst all of that is this Prime Minister take on the role of saying that he wanted to tackle methamphetamine in this country and he has done so with outstanding results. He has made sure that departments have worked together and that Ministers have worked together and there has been a coordinated approach. So instead of the previous Labour Government’s approach of saying: “Oh we can’t do anything about it because it might upset their rights.” or some other nonsense like that what we have seen is coordinated work across the police the Customs Service justice health and the prison system to make sure we deal with this issue. We are now starting to see some really good improvement but the battle is still not over. There is still more work to do. 
 We have also seen the road toll come down to the lowest it has been in 50 years and that is about very smart road policing. It is also about new road safety initiatives and better public awareness as well so congratulations to all those people involved in that; they have made us very proud. We have had 18 new public safety laws passed we have over 6000 families now protected by police safety orders we have got prison escapes actually at the lowest levels ever and we have 2000 victims now supported through the offender levy—and yes there is more.  
Under this Budget what we are seeing is not what we are seeing in many other similar countries around the world which are seeing massive redundancies in police and massive loss of confidence in the safety of the public. We are actually seeing the police maintained at the level they have been at. Yes they are constantly looking at how they can use technology to upgrade the way in which they work to be smarter faster and more effective in preventing crime in the first place. They have brought in the Policing Excellence programme which has been a fantastic success and it is going to keep going.  
In addition in the Ministry of Justice in particular we are looking at the work we are doing across the sector to make sure that we look at the “crime lines” you could say of those coming in through the pipeline those coming into the justice system either in youth justice or elsewhere and ending up in the prison and probation area. What we are doing is that the Ministers are working together to make sure that what we do and what our chief executives do is constantly predicated on the need to bring crime further down to bring youth crime down and to bring down violent assaults. So this is better public service. This is actually about looking at how we can better manage the resources we have how we can better react to the public and how we can be smart in how we operate.  
Coming up this year will be a completion of the review of the Family Court and that is something that I am very passionate about having practised for around 20 years some of it in the family area. I have seen over the years many times when the Family Court has been used to abuse others when children have not been put at the forefront of parents’ minds—sorry my throat is going.  
Chris Hipkins 
: You wouldn’t be emotional?  
Hon JUDITH COLLINS 
: No definitely not. But what we have seen actually is a situation where children can be used by one parent to attack the other and that is simply not acceptable. The State should not fund that sort of behaviour; the State should not be complicit in it. The State should be better than that and that is what we expect to be.  
In tertiary education we are continuing to target student assistance to where it is most needed and ensure better value for taxpayers. Simon O’Connor spoke about his two postgraduate degrees both completed when he was working full-time and studying full-time. I feel like I could say that I sort of did the same too: in my first postgraduate degree working full-time and studying part-time and in my second working full-time and studying part-time. It is hard to do it that way but at the end of the day we did not owe anyone any money at the end of it. It is a tough road but that is what happens. I think we have to be very careful what we do in tertiary education. We also have to be very careful with taxpayers’ money. We also have to understand that the people who are the panel beaters and the people who work in the supermarkets expect us to be careful with their tax money as well and expect a decent return for it and that means good education good outcomes and people contributing to the economy.  
In essence and in conclusion this is an excellent Budget given very difficult financial times around the world. We just have to look at our friends in Europe to see what has happened there and we are not just talking about Greece. There are other parts of Europe that are very badly affected and not just Europe: the UK parts of Australia and parts of the United States. Some have been going through very very tough times much tougher than ours. We are very fortunate in where we are placed in the world we are very fortunate to have a judicial system that is not corrupt and we are very fortunate to have a police force that is not corrupt. All these things help to build confidence in the economy and confidence in business. However we are a small country and we have to live within our means and this Budget does.