Davidson MaramaMARAMA DAVIDSON (Co-Leader—Green): The way to keep communities safer is to focus on restorative and rehabilitative initiatives for inmates. It is not to expand prison populations. It is certainly not to focus on building mega-prisons and private prisons. We are pleased to support the positive changes in this the Corrections Amendment Bill because to uphold our entire nation's humanity for the good of all of us to uphold ourselves as to what we think is a civilized society we need to ensure the humanity of all our people including our people in prisons. I'll actually start by addressing that we see the positive steps in this bill. I want to be quite specific about including the ongoing assessment for risk of self-harm and the changes to the bill as introduced back which recognises that prisoners at risk of harm—I think—would commit suicide at a rate four times more than the general population. I think that's right there Minister Davis?Hon Kelvin Davis: Yes.MARAMA DAVIDSON: So making sure that we have got proper assessments for risk of self-harm and then the initial steps here in new section 61B—the initial steps and ongoing steps that prison managers and health centre managers must take in respect of at-risk prisoners—are positive. I think about my uncle who was an inmate and who died in prison—who was murdered in prison. He caused harm and rightfully was accountable to that harm that he caused. His sentence was not death. These sorts of assessments for prisoners at risk and then the follow-up actions—things like ensuring that registered health professionals visit prisons at least twice per day unless deemed not necessary—are the sorts of positive steps that will ensure that we have a strong robust justice system actually and that we have a justice system that we can be proud of which follows due process for all people involved including victims. The weakening of our justice system which includes the undermining of the humanity of people in prisons does not help victims of crime and does not help people in prisons either. Those are not trade-offs. They need to be upheld together.I said at the start that to uphold our humanity as a nation we have to uphold the humanity of all humans including people in prison. We are clear and the Minister himself has been very clear throughout this whole debate that double-bunking in prisons is not ideal and that the pathway to reducing double-bunking is to reduce the prison population and the drivers of crime and to ensure that people have what they need to live good lives so that the circumstances of crime are reduced. That is the pathway to reducing double-bunking. We are pleased that to stop double-bunking the Minister has not chosen the pathway of building mega-prisons. We understand the current challenge facing us to reduce double-bunking and we are clear that that continues to be an aspiration and that we must work towards ending double-bunking. We know that right now we have to figure out a pathway to get there and I welcome and am pleased with both Minister Little's and Minister Davis' pathway to reducing our prison population. That is what the Greens stand for. That is what will bring us to ending double-bunking. So we can stand proudly on supporting this bill which has positive changes for upholding our country's humanity and for upholding our justice and prison systems. That is absolutely a direction that we need to head in. There is no rocket science here—there is no rocket science here.So I think there is one last positive change in regard to the clause 21 search powers that I do want to focus on. We're allowing prisons to use imaging technology to detect and deter the possession of contraband which also I understand—in the select committee discussions and the committee of the whole House debates and with the advisers—in that part of the bill overall part of clause 21 that imaging technology use recognises too that many of our people in prison who have caused harm were harmed themselves. If we have any hope of truly wanting to keep our communities safe then we do not want to be releasing unsafe humans from prisons. One way of helping to ensure that we are keeping a humanised system is by allowing the use of imaging technology to search. So I did want to talk about that particular part of the bill.I also wanted to congratulate another positive step of the part of the bill relating to a child's placement. Ideally none of us wants any child to be in the environment of a prison. But allowing for babies with their mums with their mothers is really important for bonding. I have visited those types of units in several prisons in our country and in the situation of babies and mums there is good work and good intent that the Minister's reform programme also continues to support—and through this bill—around doing the best we can in some pretty rough circumstances to provide for a positive nurturing relationship between mother and child and inmate and child. So really again this is why the Greens are supporting the positive steps in this legislation.Finally just to sum up the various positive steps in this bill move us towards an approach that ultimately recognises that keeping communities safe is maintaining the humanity of people in prisons because that also maintains the hope and humanity of their whānau and the very communities and families that they have to transition back into. And we are also looking at the drivers of crime and working to ensure that everyone in this country has enough of what they need to live good lives and that we move towards a restorative justice and rehabilitative approach. It's very clear for us in the Green Party why we need to support this legislation. Thank you Mr Speaker.