Sharples Pita: Offices of Parliament — Address to Governor-General 
Sharples Pita: Offices of Parliament — Address to Governor-General 
[Volume:646;Page:15637] 
Dr PITA SHARPLES (Co-Leader—Maori Party) 
: 
 The Maori Party is pleased to support the motion in respect of Vote Audit Vote Ombudsmen Vote Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment and Offices of Parliament. Our comments are focused on the alterations to the 2007-08 appropriations for Vote Ombudsmen. 
We support the increases in the legislative authority of the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment to accommodate new remuneration rates. We support also the changes made to respond to the commissioner’s proposal to create a more collegial culture through the desire for an open-plan office arrangement. I was interested in the proposal to develop an open-plan environment to use the space and resources more effectively and to improve staff management and communications. Although we understand the intentions we know that there are other factors that can emerge from an open-plan trend such as distraction and lack of privacy from other employees noise from office equipment furniture and cubicle design that is not appropriate to the job poor air quality uncontrollable temperatures and so on. We wonder given that it is the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment who is putting forward this proposal what thought has gone into the environmental advantages of an open-plan office. It would be interesting to know the scale of the costs and benefits attached to the open-plan arrangements particularly when it comes to the impacts of employees being sick dissatisfied or distracted. 
Another key set of recommendations from this motion is related to the budget report for audit and assurance services which again was related to office relocation salary and remuneration movements as well as costs attributable to international financial reporting and accounting standards conversion audits which we were told were larger than forecast. The explanation that these costs were unanticipated and that the office faced resource constraints is accepted. 
The key focus of our interest in this motion is however related to the Office of the Ombudsmen and in particular our support for its proposal to have an expanded role in prisons. The first item of importance in the budget report related to the review of the criminal justice sector which was tabled in the House on 5 December last year. I want to spend some time refreshing our institutional memory about this review as I believe it to be critically important in this election year as we consider the implications in the debate around law and order matters. 
The Ombudsman Mel Smith distinguished between two prevailing ideologies penal populism and soft liberalism. Smith suggested that penal populism is manipulated by political firebrands who will promote whatever hot issue is in the public arena to advance the cause of getting tough on crime. Gangs P child abuse and violence all become fodder to the champions of penal populism to bolster support for longer sentences—and more. Meanwhile on the other hand soft liberalism is supposedly favoured by criminal justice administrators and academics and it puts the needs of the criminal as being paramount. Smith draws out trends in both these approaches as having influenced criminal justice sector legislation and describes the changes in the sector over the past decade as being extraordinarily rapid. 
In the debating chamber which salivates over the way in which the numbers add up it bears remembering that the numbers in the penal population rose in the last decade from 4940 in December 1996 to 8056 in November 2007. Are we really proud as a nation that we have experienced such a massive increase in the prison muster? Mel Smith provides the answer in no uncertain terms: “The increase in the prison muster is undesirable both in view of the impact of prison on offenders and their families and in view of its demand for increased government expenditure on new prisons and their operations. Moreover it has been undesirable as there is little evidence that the changes have made us feel safer or increased our confidence in the criminal justice system.” 
These three factors—the impact on families the expenditure explosion and the failure to restore public confidence—demonstrate to me the absolute value of an independent Ombudsman function. The Ombudsman’s report last December reinforced the need to promote the view that imprisonment is a last resort and should be used as a place only for those engaged in the most serious acts of crime. A burgeoning imprisonment rate placates those who subscribe to the penal populist cause but it does little to increase and restore public confidence in the system. Probably the most extreme example of this is in the area of longstanding concern relating to the ridiculously high overrepresentation of Maori and Pasifika peoples in the criminal justice system. The Ombudsman recommended that more work needs to be done promptly to investigate the root causes of this as well as to work with the appropriate specialist organisations that are working in the area of support rehabilitation reintegration restorative justice and other such programmes. 
If we are looking for ways to restore public confidence in the justice system work programme we will note that Mel Smith’s report is again disturbing when it describes the way in which the agencies worked or did not with Te Puni Kokiri on addressing the overrepresentation of Maori. Mr Smith put it out there in black and white: “I have been advised of differences of view between the Ministry of Justice and Te Puni Kokiri. I accept that the approaches of these departments may differ but it grieves me that these differences have been allowed to impede the formulation of plans to deal with one of the more unsatisfactory aspects of our criminal justice system. Some resolution of these differences would be a major step forward.” 
The conclusions that the Ombudsman was able to present in his independent inquiry particularly his concerns regarding the massive increase in prison muster and the issues that impact on justice sector capability are issues we must respond to. Of course many other concerns were raised including the significant challenge that Greater Auckland poses in terms of the resource constraints and increasing demands placed upon quality justice services in my electorate. 
The Ombudsman was able to present his views in a frank and candid manner—exactly the quality of advice that we would expect of this role. We need more such advice in this Parliament and what is more we need to be doing something about the very serious concerns that are raised not just in respect of the December report but consistently and with particular value in terms of the Ombudsman’s role in prisons. The Maori Party will certainly support the motion. We believe it to be a thoroughly worthwhile investment. 
Motion agreed to and Address agreed to.