Power Simon: Financial Review Debate — In Committee 
Power Simon: Financial Review Debate — In Committee 
[Volume:637;Page:7941] 
SIMON POWER (National—Rangitikei) 
: 
 Of all the financial reviews that the Committee will listen to over this 4-hour debate the year in review for the Department of Corrections is the worst. There is no doubt that the Department of Corrections has had probably aside from the Ministry of Health the worst 12 months in review of any Government department or ministry. In fact a recent poll in the  
New Zealand Herald  
indicated that aside from health law and order and corrections issues were at the top of people’s minds throughout New Zealand. So poor has the reputation of this department become over the last 12 months that currently around Wellington there is a yarn that if a graduate joins the Department of Corrections as a policy analyst he or she will be issued with an executive assistant a BlackBerry and a manager to give the blame to if something goes wrong. 
In the last year in review this department has dealt with a $130 million overspend on two of its prisons issues relating to contraband getting in and out of its prisons at an alarming rate and allegations of corruption at two of its prisons. At one prison in particular Rimutaka Prison two officials were today suspended which reminds the Committee that those matters were initially denied by the Department of Corrections. It was not until the Minister stepped in that some of those issues were even looked at. The department has dealt with issues relating to cellphone use in prisons LCD televisions millions of dollars in costs to landscape new prisons inmates allegedly fathering children from inside correctional facilities a lack of drug and alcohol rehabilitation courses a lack of close monitoring and the replacement of rehabilitation courses after it was found in the last financial review that inmates who undertook those courses were more likely to reoffend than if they had not undertaken them in the first place. 
We have had some positives. In particular I have been watching with great interest the implementation of new drug rehabilitation courses and centres within our prisons. The Minister knows I have an interest in those matters and I acknowledge that as a positive step forward for the department. I struggle with the terminology the department uses such as “drug-free units”. My impression was that the whole of a jail should be drug-free. 
In the year under review we have seen the tragic death of young Liam Ashley. The failure systemically by the department to get basic things right such as separating out youths—under-18-year-olds—from dangerous prisoners had tragic consequences. We have seen that case bore into the heart of some serious systemic incompetence in this department in the year in review. Of course in the most recent days as part of that continued systemic failure from the year in review we have dealt with the tragedy of the killing by Mr Graeme Burton of an innocent person Karl Kuchenbecker in the hills outside of Wainuiomata. At this time in the second week of March the department has already provided New Zealand with the quote of the year. At a press conference the department’s chief executive claimed: “there’s no blood on my hands.” 
This department is in such trouble that in recent months the Prime Minister has been forced to step in and front the public handling of more than one issue over the period in review. The Prime Minister has seen fit to seek separate legal opinions from the Law Commission about whether the Parole Board the probation service and the Department of Corrections acted correctly. This clearly indicates that she has no confidence in this Minister or this department to deliver the outputs they are required to deliver as a department or a ministry or frankly to deliver her as the Prime Minister of this country the advice she needs in order to be able to answer the tough questions when more things go wrong—so much so that she simply bypasses this department now and seeks advice directly from the Law Commission. 
It is also staggering to us on the Opposition side of the House that amongst all this chaos—this litany of things that go wrong in this department which just seems to lurch from crisis to crisis—the department continues to deny that these problems exist. On one or two occasions the Minister himself has had to disagree publicly with the chief executive in order to move investigations into matters that the department itself did not want to be further investigated. More particularly leading into the Prime Minister’s statement at the start of this year the chief executive officer of the Department of Corrections told the New Zealand public that he was not aware of any changes to parole. Of course the Prime Minister then announced those changes in her statement to the House on 13 February. 
Against all of this background the Government still has the nerve to be opposed to the private management of prisons. I will step back from the catastrophe of how the inept senior management of this department have been paid several million dollars in bonuses while these particular events have been occurring. Surely the question on everybody’s mind would be whether the private management of our prisons could do any worse. Could the private sector get it any more wrong than the public sector has? Would it be capable of producing a list of incompetencies as lengthy as the one I have just recited to the Committee? There is not one single person in this Chamber who believes that somebody else running our prisons could not do a better job. In fact the Minister knows—as I know the previous Minister Paul Swain knew—that the Auckland Central Remand Prison which was privately managed did a fantastic job. It was so good in fact that the then head of the Department of Corrections sent to the incoming Minister a document that stated: “We have a lot to learn from the way the private sector provides management skills in our prisons.” 
In that regard I look forward to my member’s bill being drawn from the ballot during this coming financial review. I look forward to the House supporting the progress of that bill because frankly the year in review for the Department of Corrections could not have been any worse. The capability of the senior management of the department could not have been sloppier. Against that background these people are still paying themselves bonuses and continuing to live in a culture which has grown in this department that continues to deny that things go wrong. This is in stark contrast as I have said publicly to the approach adopted by the chairperson of the Parole Board who at least had the good sense to come out publicly and take some responsibility for the shambles that has occurred over the last few weeks. 
This department will not get better in this coming year unless the Minister steps down or at the very least has the courage to deal to the senior management of this department who continue to run it and are guided only by a culture of denial that things are going wrong. Time is running out for the public to be convinced that this Minister or this department are capable of doing anything that could go right. Frankly there are no surprises when things continue to go wrong.