Mitchell MarkHon MARK MITCHELL (National—Whangaparāoa): I want to address first of all the safety of our corrections officers in the jobs that they do. I was lucky enough to be invited by the Corrections union to their AGM this morning in Auckland to be able to address them and also get involved in some questions and answers. Basically I'm not going to talk about the content of that meeting because we have an agreement that anything discussed inside the meeting will stay inside the meeting but I do want to acknowledge them. The one thing that actually really annoys me is that our corrections officers when we talk about public safety we often don't refer to them because they are largely invisible. We don't see them. We don't interact with them on a daily basis. But I want to highlight the incredible work that they do the sacrifice that they make the professional approach that they take to their role to keeping our community safe. And not just keeping our communities safe; they are dedicated people that actually want to be able to deliver rehabilitation programmes to prisoners when they come into our justice system because we want them to come back out and we want them to be able to re-join society and we want them to be able to make good decisions in their lives. But the reality of it is they have been under so much pressure and their numbers are so depleted that they can't safely deliver those rehabilitation services and you've seen a 35 percent reduction.The Government made a big deal when we made our announcement on the weekend. They rushed out there. They somehow managed to convince some of our media that woke up to the fact that they were being tricked and they came out and actually acknowledged that. They said Oh we've already got a bill in the ballot. We've already got a bill coming into the House that will deal with rehabilitation to remand prisoners." Well you don't. This is an abject failure. Our bill actually addresses the fact that we have 45 percent—45 percent—of the prisoners currently in the Corrections system on remand. That's an abject failure in itself. But that's an issue that relates to courts and relates to justice being delivered quickly and at the moment it's being denied.On top of that 45 percent you've got 20 percent—20 percent—of those remand prisoners that will complete their entire sentence on remand. That is completely totally unacceptable. By the way what are they doing while they're sitting in the prison on remand? They are getting therapeutic—Toni Severin: Nothing.Hon MARK MITCHELL: —rehabilitation. Nothing; absolutely right. They're getting therapeutic courses delivered to them. They should have access to meaningful rehabilitation that can deal with violent offending and can deal with sexual offending. This bill here doesn't address either of those things. It's ridiculous. It's a joke. They came out and they tried to convince the country: "Oh no; we've got a bill that deals with that." It doesn't. The announcement that National made over the weekend it does deal with that. It does allow the system to be able to deliver the full 29 rehabilitation programmes and for these remand prisoners to have access to them.We acknowledge that a remand prisoner hasn't yet been convicted but that doesn't mean that they lose the right to be able to engage and have access to those programmes. By the way when you've got 20 percent of them—20 percent—doing their entire time in prison on remand it means that they're coming back into society without the benefit of having access to those rehabilitation programmes.So Mr Robertson can stand on the other side and talk about rabbits and things like that. The only one that's searching for a rabbit is Mr Robertson to try and pull it out of the hat because he realises that they're under serious pressure and they are under serious pressure. They don't even understand. It was clear by their rushing out with their comments and the statement they gave to our media and our press gallery that they didn't even understand what was in their own bill. It's a joke.When I finished the meeting today with the Corrections union I was very lucky and felt very fortunate. They had presented me with two things. One of them was a plaque and the other one was this was this pen. This pen has got an inscription on it. It's a lovely pen. It's got an inscription on it; the inscription is "Where's Kelvin?" Where is the Minister? Because the Minister is missing in action. Why you wouldn't engage—to me the meeting this morning was refreshing. Do you know why? Because I was actually hearing from the front line. I was hearing from the people that actually deliver the services not the ones sitting in headquarters not the boffins coming up with other new sort of programmes and new ideas and new red tape and new compliance that actually impacts the front line and the services that they are trying to provide; you actually get to hear from the front line the corrections officers that are turning up every day and doing the hard work. For me it was refreshing to be in that environment and be able to hear and get direct feedback in terms of what's happening and what they need.I just want to come back to the comment that the Minister made around Corrections staff and their safety. The best thing this Government can do is actually engage with them and listen to them because they know what they need to do to try and make their workplace safer. They've got some very good initiatives that they've put together and worked up and I'd encourage the corrections Minister to sit down and engage and get serious about how we make our prisons safer.We had a ridiculous situation where we had Kiri Allan the Minister of Justice in the last few weeks come out in the public and say "Our prisons are a university for criminals. Our prisons are a place for gang members to recruit." That's true. That's true because the way they've configured our prisons means that they've lumped all the gang members from one gang in together. It allows them the ability to be organised. It allows them the ability to try and intimidate and on many occasions assault our corrections officers. But then this Government brings a bill to the House whereby they are now going to mix young prisoners with those older experienced gang members. So you've got the Minister of Justice on the one hand saying "They are universities for crime and the gangs use them to recruit. But oh by the way we'll take those younger offenders that have come into the system and we're going to mix them together. We're going to give them more access. We're going to put them together." They're completely totally confused and they're contradicting themselves in terms of their approach to our criminal justice system which is consistent with this Government and the approach that they've taken in the last six years. So again I'd ask the next speaker to get up and address that and tell us why they think it's a good idea to take younger offenders that are coming into the system that are impressionable that are at risk of being recruited by gangs that should be kept away from them but you're proposing to now mix them and put them together so it actually increases their exposure and their risk to being recruited by the gangs.In principle we are going to support this bill because we do want to see steps in the right direction in terms of trying to make our corrections officers' workplace safer. At the moment it's not. This Government has put millions of dollars into a recruiting scheme that's delivered about 61 or 62 new corrections officers. They are seriously under-numbered they're seriously overwhelmed and they need support. Before this Government can even talk about increasing the delivery of rehabilitation they have to get the staffing right. They have to focus on retention. They have to focus on valuing the corrections staff that they have at the moment. Because I can tell you something: experience matters. When they're dealing with what they're dealing with at the moment experience matters. They have to figure out how to get their recruitment right how to identify—and by the way be realistic in expectations when they are recruiting new corrections officers the environment they're going into because they're not going into a risk-free environment; they're going into an environment where the risk of assault is very real and you have to be honest with people about that.So those are the issues that need to be addressed. They've been failing on rehabilitation. We've put forward a policy where we've been very clear that we're very serious in making sure that 45 percent of the prison population at the moment that is not getting the full range of those 29 programmes will. They bring a silly weak insipid bill that messes around on the fringes and says "Oh we'll do a bit more therapeutic stuff." It's ridiculous. They have to focus on getting the prison officers recruited. They have to focus on making sure that our corrections officers have the staff and that they're able to safely deliver those rehabilitation programmes otherwise this bill in terms of rehabilitation is useless. Thank you very much."