Ryall Tony: Urgent Debates — Corrections Department—Ombudsmen’s Report 
Ryall Tony: Urgent Debates — Corrections Department—Ombudsmen’s Report 
[Volume:639;Page:9835] 
Hon TONY RYALL (National—Bay of Plenty) 
: 
 I am pleased to be able to take a call in this debate which is premised on the very sad events surrounding the transportation of Liam Ashley and his murder in a transport wagon those many months ago. 
Like all New Zealanders I was shocked that such a thing could happen to a 17-year-old. He was someone whom the rules said should have been transported separately but he was not transported separately. Those were the questions that were brought to Parliament and I must say that the Minister of Corrections handled them appallingly with a lack of sincerity and a lack of action. 
It is clear that this is a Minister who without question is prepared to accept the word of a department that this report shows has lied to the Ombudsman an Officer of Parliament. In my experience of overseeing the Department of Corrections on the previous Law and Order Committee that was par for the course with that Government department. The people who led the department did everything they possibly could to never tell the whole story and to never fess up when something went wrong and it has continued under its current leadership. 
How can Barry Matthews and Damien O’Connor hold their heads high with this report? How can anyone in that department hold their head high with this report? There comes a time in a Minister’s career when trying to whitewash everything and blaming everybody else have to come to an end. For Damien O’Connor to try to use this report as some sort of justification for his appalling leadership of the Department of Corrections is something that should be severely criticised. 
That is the reason why New Zealanders are worried about this Department of Corrections. It is a department that fulfils an important role in public safety. It incarcerates people who if they were out of prison would more than likely be committing more offences and harming the people of New Zealand. It is vital that they be maintained safely and securely. But we know that it is failing in that responsibility. And how can it be that a department charged with teaching criminals to be honest and to rehabilitate could be dishonest itself? What sort of example does it set for prisoners when the people who are charged with rehabilitating them and teaching them to be truthful are not truthful themselves? 
The lies of the Department of Corrections contributed directly to the tragedy that happened to Liam Ashley. If that department had done what it told the Ombudsmen it had done then this tragedy may not have happened. This tragedy may not have happened if it had done what it told the Ombudsmen what it had done. 
Chris Auchinvole 
: Avoidable. 
Hon TONY RYALL 
: It could have been avoidable. Instead we have a young man who had a troubled life but who did not deserve to be treated in the way that he was. The department should have transported him separately from the hard-core criminals who were in the van on that day. 
This is the department that told the Ombudsmen that it was dealing with the safety issues associated with prisoner transport and it should have known better. That is what this debate is about today. What will be done about the Department of Corrections? A culture of deceit permeates from the highest reaches of that department and it is tolerated by the Minister and the Prime Minister. It is tolerated by both of those Ministers. Damien O’Connor of course is now trying to move the blame. I would ask whether members heard him on the radio this morning. He said that he had confidence in Barry Matthews at the moment. Well we know what that “at the moment” means. It means that someone else is to blame. 
In the end Ministers have to ask basic questions that the public would expect them to ask when something like this happens. We saw in question time earlier today that Mr Hodgson as Minister of Health is not asking basic questions that go to the heart of what is going on in his portfolio. Surely we have learnt that with the Bierre incident. Mr Hodgson asked one question and one question alone in the entire time before the court judgment that said that Dr Bierre was a crook came out. What has Mr O’Connor done? He has not asked any hard questions about the performance of his department. That is what the Minister’s job is—to ask the questions and to get to the bottom of the answers. He cannot believe what he is told in that portfolio half the time. That is why Ministers need to dig deeper. 
Ministers should know that the answers their departments give when there is a problem are full of bureaucratese obfuscation and self-justification. That is why Ministers have to dig and ask questions. We have not seen that from Minister O’Connor. He is always prepared to accept every failure within the department that he overviews. How long can Damien O’Connor carry on mining the goodwill he accumulated as a backbench MP wronged by the Prime Minister? Because that is what he has mined as a Minister; often it is the only reason why he gets away with what he gets away with. People always see him as that wronged backbencher who tolerated all that Timberlands problem when he first came to Parliament. That is why he gets away with so much of it. But now that is gone because he has been a Minister long enough to know that there are questions that should be asked and this Minister has failed to ask those basic questions. Surely he would have learnt his lesson from standing up in this House and giving answers prepared by his department. He should have known that they were wrong misleading and dishonest because he should have asked more questions. 
When we read in this report about the deceit of the Department of Corrections I am absolutely appalled and I think it is time that heads should roll in that department. So what will the Government do? Will it rely on Damien O’Connor and Barry Matthews to fix the problems that they themselves have denied for so long? Can we expect the people who deceived the Chief Ombudsman to be the same people who will fix this problem? When we ask questions in the House in 6 months’ time about progress on this agenda and the Minister—whoever it is—stands up and says: “My department advises me that progress has been made in meeting these requirements.” will we believe that Minister? It will be like a Lianne Dalziel answer in Parliament—we just will not know whether it is the full story. That is the problem. No one can have faith in what the Department of Corrections has done or have faith in the solution. 
There are many good people in the Department of Corrections—many good people who are doing their best to make this a safer community—and they are embarrassed by what they read in this report. If one thing is to come out of the Liam Ashley tragedy other than the fact that other young people may be protected in the future it is that we go to the root of the deceit of the Department of Corrections. This Minister needs to come back to the House with the answer in regard to what to do about the dysfunctional leadership in the Department of Corrections because it is clear from this report that it had a lack of leadership focus and acceptance of the responsibility of looking after a 17-year-old—a 17-year-old who was neglected and ignored. That is a really big responsibility and this department has simply failed to accept it. I do not think that a Minister standing up doing his “Oh shucks!” thing and smiling is sufficient to deal with the real issues that have been raised in this investigation by John Belgrave the Chief Ombudsman. They are very very serious issues. The last time an Ombudsman found that a department had lied to him in the “lying in unison” scandal of the Immigration Service heads rolled. Will any heads be rolling in this matter?