Prebble Richard: Corrections Bill — Third Reading 
Prebble Richard: Corrections Bill — Third Reading 
[Volume:617;Page:13344] 
Hon RICHARD PREBBLE (Leader—ACT) 
: 
 I rise to speak to the third reading of the Corrections Bill. I will take up the points made by the Green MP but I first want to make a few comments about the bill. In this respect I can agree with the Labour Minister Mr Tamihere who said that one of the serious things Parliament can do is authorise by law a person to be deprived of his or her liberty and that we as parliamentarians should look at the matter of setting out what those conditions should be. Having said that this bill as a matter of lawmaking is fundamentally misconceived. What we have is basically the regulations put into statute. So there are provisions that set out in minute detail how the prison is to be run. I was not on the select committee. During the Committee stage I heard Mr Power raising a point about clause 71 which deals with bedding. He said that bedding had to be laundered in between prisoners which made me wonder what the definition of bedding is. So I looked it up in the dictionary and discovered that “bedding” includes mattresses. I draw that to the attention of the House because here I am after 27 years finally getting to amend a Government bill. I see that there is a new subclause now— 
Simon Power 
: The “Prebble section”. 
Hon RICHARD PREBBLE 
: Yes. Subclause (4) states: “In this section—bed includes a mattress bedding does not include a mattress.” The absurdity of that matter has been taken up by some of the media but I have no doubt that if we were to go through this bill clause by clause we would find many other clauses that are just as ridiculous. I looked at the clauses dealing with mail and it appears to me that within prisons now it will be virtually impossible to prevent a prisoner who has nothing else to do but who has a good supply of paper—which I think the prisons will supply—basically harassing every citizen up and down New Zealand. 
 It is true that under that section the citizen being harassed can then write to the prison to prevent the prisoner writing to that person but do all 4 million of us have to do that? I can go through other sections and make similar criticisms. However the fundamental point I am making to the Government is that this legislation is misconceived. We should be setting out the basic principles for running prisons and corrections services and then leaving those matters for regulation. Mr Ryall pointed out that because prisoners have nothing else to do they are known to be litigious; they are known to raise matters. Because this legislation is now in statute it will be a matter for bush lawyers. They will take matters to court. Indeed the legislation we are passing basically states that according to those sections prisoners can take prison authorities to court because we cannot put any restrictions upon a prisoner getting in touch with his or her legal advisers or any other person in authority. 
The legislation is misconceived and it will cost us a lot of money. Having said that I do not say that our prisons should not—as Mr Tamihere said—obey certain humanitarian principles; they should. He said that the greatest principle is a person’s liberty. In fact it is not. The greatest principle a person has is his or her right to life. I point out to the House that the legislation will cost some people their life. We all know that. Most of us would have received submissions—as I have—from senior people in our prison service who pointed out that the effect of having a private prison is not as described to us by the Green MP and we can tell that it is not. He said that the Auckland prison is a shining example. He did say “glossy” and then tried to state reasons why private prisons somehow are worse. We know that private prisons have a record that is exemplary far better than expected by someone like myself who supported putting in private prisons. However I never said that there would not be a suicide in a private prison because that would be a ridiculous claim to make. 
We know that suicides happen within our prisons. We know that people mutilate themselves. We also know that many mentally unstable people are in our prisons. In fact many people in prison today would not have been in prison a few years ago except juries now will not accept insanity pleas because they have a great concern about our mental hospitals letting people out with a bottle of pills. Even though a jury may think that a person is a complete nutter that he or she is dangerous it will put that person in prison. So our prisons today have to manage some of the most dangerously mentally ill patients. 
We all know there were Public Service Association members opposed to privatisation. I am sure the Green MP knows that the prison authorities referred to the private prison—which is not just for prisoners on remand; there are lifers there; some of the most dangerous mentally ill patients in our prison system are there—and then were absolutely astonished that none of them committed suicide. We also know that by voting for this bill we will see some of those prisoners die. Then we had the Labour MP say that the reason he was opposed to privatisation was because of humanity. Where is the humanity in that? 
Then the Green MP said that various organisations made complaints against private prisons. I say this to the House. There are so many private prisons around the world and I have no doubt there have been incidents of prisoner abuse and the like. The difference is that when that happens in a State prison—and we have had that repeatedly; Mr Ron Mark reads out a list every day of various people having sex people being beaten; I will not go through the list because it is too disgusting but the list is read out—because a prison is State run by State servants the State prison is never closed. We all know that it is extremely difficult to get rid of a civil servant. We have State prisonsand I am not talking about all State wardens. However there are people who should not be wardens. Some prisons have been so badly run that they should have been closed down. The Minister of Corrections at the time would have liked to do that but he could not. 
Of course when a prison is privately run when there is a contract that is the difference. Under the principle of a contract the Government can state: “Here are the things you were told to do Mr Private Prison. You haven’t done it. We are terminating the contract. You’re all fired.” That is why on average private prisons worldwide have been run better. Because when they are not run better they are got rid of. But the Government has taken that away with the bogus statement that it is perfectly OK to take away a person’s liberty providing the warden works for the Public Service Association. That is nonsense. It is only OK to take away a person’s liberty providing it is done according to the rule of law. That is what we should be doing. This legislation is defective in setting out the rule of law. Because the ability to fire bad men and women who should not be wardens in prisons has been removed we all know that as a result of this legislation there will be a triumph of Green ideology over humanity and practical common sense and some fellow New Zealanders will die.