Borrows Chester: Corrections Amendment Bill (No 2) — Second Reading 
Borrows Chester: Corrections Amendment Bill (No 2) — Second Reading 
[Volume:651;Page:1016] 
CHESTER BORROWS (National—Whanganui) 
: 
 It is true to say that most of the views around corrections policy as a whole are fairly similar and it is not surprising then that the National Government would continue with this legislation that started under the Labour Government. It received good discussion at the Law and Order Committee’s deliberation and a bit of polish was put on it there. I am pleased to see that there is wide-ranging support for it across the House. 
Some of the initiatives in the bill are those taking advantage of technology and it is no surprise that gradually prisoners start expanding and gaining more and more latitude from advances in technology. Considering the size of a cellphone and where one can be jammed it is no surprise then that we are finding more and more cellphones within our prisons. We know for instance that one prisoner may be smuggling one particular small cellphone into a prison but several others need only a SIM card these days so wide access is gained and it is good to be able to see that the ability to jam cellphone calls will be something that will be initiated pursuant to this piece of legislation. 
We have to admit that the comments made by ACT member David Garrett and comparing us to other countries I think really just underline the fact that New Zealanders are pretty innovative. Even our criminals are innovative and they get away with stuff because they are sneaky and bad. But they are not so sneaky that they do not get caught and end up in jail. But it is no surprise then that they push those boundaries so we need tighter and tighter legislation at a time when prisoners are receiving—via human rights legislation and the New Zealand Bill of Rights legislation—more and more freedoms. So there will be stricter control. 
I take issue with comments made by the Green Party as far as the lack of a need to fully scan prisoners’ mail. I think that most people around the country would agree that in these times there is more of a need to keep a scrutiny on that. It has right up until now anyway or until the implementation of this legislation been far easier than it has ever been before for prisoners to have communication with the outside world. 
We have been challenged by members opposite as to what steps the National Government will take to bring down the prison population. I guess just to give one indication that an often-quoted statistic is the 83 percent of prisoners who have drug and alcohol dependency problems. Yet under the regime that was run by the previous Government prisoners could not get any rehabilitation schemes if they were in prison for less than 2 years unless they were provided by the non-governmental organisation sector which is where a call came from me when I was in Opposition— 
Hon Phil Goff 
: Oh that’s just nonsense. We increased the places from 40 to 500—more than tenfold; a tenfold increase in rehab places. The member doesn’t know what he is talking about. 
CHESTER BORROWS 
: In the first 2 years. We had people who had serious drug and alcohol problems but who were unable to receive any sort of help with those problems if they had been sentenced to less than 2 years or until they had completed at least two-thirds of their sentence and that was a real problem. Under the Auckland Central Remand Prison—run by a private company of course—people on remand were able to obtain and receive benefit from rehabilitative programmes that were run there. But of course they were not available on remand once that prison was taken over by the State sector. 
So we look forward to seeing an expanding role for rehabilitation services inside prisons. My own local example of course was that under a National Government a shoe factory was put into Kaitoke prison. It had good success in rehabilitating prisoners. Prison officers told us anecdotally because strict records were not kept that those prisoners who were working inside that shoe factory never returned to prison. They may have gone to some other prison but Kaitoke prison was a local prison and one would expect them to go back to that. They never saw anyone who had been through that shoe factory come back into prison and of course that prison was closed under a Labour Government because it was not making a profit—a terrible shame. 
So we look forward to seeing the passage of this bill with the support of almost the whole House and an acceptance that corrections matters are largely apolitical apart from the odd little point scored from time to time.