Goff Phil: Corrections (Contract Management of Prisons)  Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Goff Phil: Corrections (Contract Management of Prisons)  Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:653;Page:2026] 
Hon PHIL GOFF (Leader of the Opposition) 
: 
 That was a written speech read word for word by the Minister Judith Collins without any passion conviction or belief in what she was saying. 
We have to ask why the National Government is moving to privatise prisons. I guess the first answer is that essentially this National Government believes in privatisation. National would not admit to it during the election campaign but now it has already signalled that it will take the profit sectors of the accident compensation scheme and give them to Australian insurance companies to make profit from New Zealanders and provide fewer services. Now it is talking about doing the same thing in the prison system. 
Why is National doing it? The first reason is simply blind ideology. Those members have faith that somehow the private sector will manage prisons better will deliver those services for a lower cost and at the same time will provide a very healthy profit to again the overseas companies that will run these prison services. That is an act of faith on the part of National but in that speech from the Minister there was not one iota of evidence that the private sector could provide any of the things that she suggested. The first reason National is privatising prisons is ideology. 
I will say this about ideology if ideology means values. On this side of the House we believe that running a corrections system is a core public service in exactly the same way that running the Defence Force or running the police force is. Those are core public services. In none of those instances have we ever believed that turning those services over to the commercial sector to make a profit is appropriate. This I would suggest is the top of a slippery slope. If we are to privatise the corrections system then I ask why we would not move to do that to other core public services. Of course National members never had the courage to say that before the election. They said that in this term of office there would not be any privatisation. Mr Coleman the Minister of Broadcasting keeps saying that he will not privatise Television New Zealand this term but the message very clearly is that this is the inherent agenda of National—to go back to its roots to privatise everything that it can and to turn over these core public services to the commercial sector so that a profit can be made. 
But the real motivation for this Minister lies elsewhere. This Minister likes to be known as “Crusher Collins” but after the fiasco with Barry Matthews she became known as “Chihuahua Collins” and that is a little bit more like it. I remember seeing a cartoon in a newspaper. There was the prison the barbed wire the big kennel with “Rottweiler” on it and there was this little chihuahua with the Minister’s face and a little pink ribbon on it. That said it all. Heads were going to roll. She failed. She backed down. She talked tough she did not deliver. 
Then she comes to this House complaining that prison numbers over the next 10 years are going up by 5000. This is the same Minister who said that Labour was soft on law and order. Now she is saying that the legislation is too tough as it means that more people are in prison and she cannot cope. In Opposition she was the first person to get up and tell the Minister to take responsibility. Now she will not touch it with a bargepole. She will not take responsibility and she believes that by privatising prisons she can avoid responsibility. It will be the private sector’s fault that it has not delivered what it promised and what she promised. But I tell the Minister that she can run but she cannot hide. She is still accountable and by privatising she will not remove the accountability because we will hold her accountable for what experience tells us will happen in the private sector. 
I will just say that there is one other motivation—and let us be very clear about this—as to why the Minister wants to privatise. Privatisation is a way of forcing down wages and bringing down working conditions. Every private prison in the world has made its profit by reducing staff levels and reducing services. I will give the Minister some examples of what has happened overseas and as to why there is absolutely no evidence for her claim that somehow a superior service at a better cost will be delivered. 
In 2001 the United States National Council on Crime and Delinquency produced a report. It stated that there was “no data to support the contention that privately operated facilities offer cost savings over publicly managed facilities”. That is what the US National Council on Crime and Delinquency said. It said that there was no evidence that services to prisons and conditions of imprisonment were significantly improved in privately operated facilities. In fact it came out with some concrete findings. The report stated that privatisation led to a 15 percent lower ratio of staffing to inmates. That is supposed to make our society safer—a reduction in the number of staff who are running the prisons. The report stated that the management information systems were less well organised in the private sector. It stated that the number of serious incidents was higher in the privately run system than in the public system. It stated that there was a higher rate of assaults by prisoner on prisoner and by prisoner on staff in the private sector. I ask where the evidence is in that report that privatisation of our prisons in New Zealand will produce better conditions better standards and lower costs. There is no evidence there. 
Canada just 2 years ago ended the privatisation experiment in that country. It returned the one private prison it had to the public sector saying that after 5 years it could find no appreciable benefits from privatisation. Canada I say for the Minister’s information has a very similar system to that of New Zealand. 
Then in the United Kingdom there was a report by the National Audit Office in 2003—just over 5 years ago. It stated that the performance was mixed but it pointed out that of the bottom-ranked prisons almost all of them were privately managed prisons. The worst-performing prisons in the United Kingdom were in the private sector. 
I ask this Minister where the evidence is that we will get better results a safer and better society through the privatisation of our prisons. This bill is blind ideology. This is blind faith by the National Government that somehow privatisation will produce better-run prisons at a lower cost. It was private sector people who brought about the financial crisis of the developed world at the present time. 
I want to say that under the previous Labour Government the prison system in this country—the public prison system—appreciably improved. The number of escapes was down by 84 percent under a Labour Government. Drug taking was down by two-thirds. The Minister is very fortunate to have inherited a situation where cellphones can no longer be used in prisons because every prison in this country is jammed. She is very fortunate to have inherited a situation where annually 600 inmates are now getting drug and alcohol rehabilitation where over 1800 inmates a year are getting literacy and numeracy training and where 60 percent of sentenced prisoners are getting work in prison. I say to the Minister that those advances will be compromised under privatisation because the private sector has no vested interest at all in producing better results. It has a vested interest in making a greater profit. If members want to see the ultimate corruption in the private sector then they will see it in the United States where judges were recently convicted of corruption for sending young prisoners to privately managed prisons to up their profit margins. That is the judiciary in the United States. There is clear evidence that if we turn this sector over to private management then there is a vested interest in profit making— 
Hon Judith Collins 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. From what Mr Goff has just said it certainly appears that he is implying that there is corruption in the judiciary. I would just like to get confirmation he does not mean the New Zealand judiciary. 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Eric Roy) 
: I did not take that inference at all. The member has 10 seconds. 
Hon PHIL GOFF 
: All I can say in 10 seconds is that that last comment is a true reflection on the Minister. The Minister should open her ears—I said no such thing. I say prison management is a function for the core public sector. There is no evidence of reduced costs; there is evidence that there will be reduced safety and reduced services such as rehabilitation.