Borrows Chester: Estimates Debate — In Committee 
Borrows Chester: Estimates Debate — In Committee 
[Volume:640;Page:10509] 
CHESTER BORROWS (National—Whanganui) 
: 
 I guess there has not been a worse year than this year for the Department of Corrections. Every time someone gets up and holds the Minister to account for the performance of the department he keeps going back to the point that the number of escapes has dropped by 73 percent. He then goes on to talk about three escapes instead of four or something along those lines. But if we have a close look at the Department of Corrections and where it has been over the past 12 months or so there has been one little mess after another. 
Let us have a look at the Graeme Burton debacle for instance which quickly followed the Liam Ashley one. Graeme Burton killed Karl Kuchenbecker and wounded three others. Who was in charge of Graeme Burton at that time? The answer is that it was the Department of Corrections. Burton was on parole and it was the department’s job to watch over him to ensure that his movements were compliant with his parole conditions. We know that he was released into the community on 10 July on parole and his exact location was withheld. He set about attending a course. Later on the police had information from good informants that he was wandering all over the place and was hitting up lower-order drug dealers using stand-over tactics—beating them up before robbing them. On one occasion Burton is said to have threatened to shoot all six witnesses to one of these robbings and beatings. We know that that took place on 30 November. He carried on like that. 
On 5 December Burton breached his parole and the Department of Corrections sent him a letter. No one went to look for him. No one told the police. No one followed up. His parole officer went on holiday. More things happened—the sorts of things we would expect him to be pulled up for. The police were worried sick. They were getting information on a frequent basis as to what he was doing—home invasion standing over other drug dealers making threats and gathering arms—but nothing was done. Eventually as we know he killed Karl Kuchenbecker on 7 January. What happened then? There was a storm in the media. The Department of Corrections was supposedly held to account and we had the further debacle of the CEO of the department appearing on television holding out his hands and saying: “There’s no blood on my hands.” 
Last night we had a vein-popping tirade from the Hon Phil Goff. He went on and on about National’s record in corrections. He was the one who made accusations around a project called INCIS which we all know is a part of history as a failed project. What he did not point out was that this Government appointed “Mr INCIS” as the CEO of the Department of Corrections. 
This year the Labour Government through the Department of Corrections will spend $311000 on chartered flights to move prisoners around the country. We have to wonder how it can spend so much money on doing that. The department spent $31 million on consultants in the past 4 years. I know that running up to the 1999 election there was an article in our local paper written by the Labour Party candidate who caned the National Government for having spent $5 million on consultants in the previous year. The Department of Corrections spent $3 million in the first 3 months of this year on consultants. Who would argue that they are any better than they were then? An amount of $2.6 million was wasted on removing the contract for the remand centre in Auckland and putting it back under the Government sector because there was a clash of philosophical extremes on the part of the Labour Party. 
The Labour Party through the Department of Corrections spends $190 a night on people staying in police cells. Last year 57000 prisoners—Department of Corrections inmates—stayed in police cells at a cost of $10.8 million. We have to wonder just where it is going. Jails can have flat-screen TVs and underfloor heating but when we ask the Department of Corrections about that it says: “Well you can’t build old. We’re building these new prisons and you can’t build old.” Well actually the department can build something that is not luxurious. It can tone it down a bit. We have to wonder just how much rope this Government wants when it can double the amount quoted—from $500 million to $890 million—to build four new prisons get 500 extra beds and spend $1 million per bed. If the Government cannot get a prison bed for less than $1 million it is doing it wrong.