Bindra MaheshMAHESH BINDRA (NZ First): Given that I have only 5 minutes to share with my colleague Pita Paraone I will try to stick to my own area of work—Hon Gerry Brownlee: What's that?MAHESH BINDRA: —which is corrections. It is not woodwork Gerry; it is corrections. Within this Budget the Government has budgeted $763 million to build up additional prison capacity and only $79 million for rehabilitation which is a very important part of the whole corrections system. The Government intends to put in $763 million to build new prisons and then the intention behind that is to hand them over to a foreign company which will make profits out of them. So this is a prisons for profit" Budget and we do not support this aspect of the Budget.The rehabilitation services are already suffering. They were not given the tools they needed. The programmes were cut down the quality of the programmes got poorer over the years and the beneficiaries of those programmes—that is the offenders on sentences of more than 6 months—were not getting what it was intended they be given. That was one of the reasons why the planned 25 percent reduction in reoffending was not achieved by Corrections in spite of that being the target many years ago.Before that 25 percent reduction in reoffending was emphasised Corrections was more focused on the safe secure and humane containment of prisoners. There was no focus at all on the rehabilitation of prisoners. However even the reduction in reoffending by 25 percent by 2017 was not achieved by Corrections and that is the reason Corrections then removed that target altogether so that there were no measurements of success. Obviously there were no measures of failures by Corrections.Now what Corrections has also failed to achieve is the breaking of the cycle of reoffending. In my 10 years as a custodial officer I actually physically locked up three generations of offenders. That is the tragic part of a corrections officer's job; when you see three generations going through the same cell door. Three generations—I locked up a grandfather I locked up his son and then I locked up his son. So there is no achievement by these rehabilitation services. That cycle is still going on which is a sad thing to see. This Budget does not address that cycle of reoffending by generations—by generations.In 2014 prison numbers went up to 8700 which was a record then. It is well over that now. It is touching 10000 we are told and that is the reason the Government wants to build more prisons. However the Government is not serious about stopping people from coming to jail giving people education giving people apprenticeships and giving people job training so that they can stay out of jail and earn a living for their families which is a sad thing. The $79 million invested in reducing reoffending is paltry. It is a paltry sum to give to rehabilitation services out of which only $14 million is focused on reducing youth reoffending.In recent months we have seen that youth offenders have actually committed the majority of crimes and the recidivism rate among the youth offender population is 71 percent. And only $14 million has been given for reducing reoffending by youth which again is not adequate. We have already seen the effect of that kind of cut on funding: that every single day there are dairies and liquor shops being robbed and burgled by these youths. That is the cycle that this Budget should have addressed and it has not. Thank you."