Chauvel Charles: Corrections Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Chauvel Charles: Corrections Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
[Sitting date: 12 February 2013. Volume:687;Page:7739. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
CHARLES CHAUVEL (Labour) 
: 
 When this bill the Corrections Amendment Bill was read a first time my colleagues and I acknowledged that it did contain as the Minister of Corrections said a number of provisions that would assist in the better administration of prisons. But we said at the time that we had a major problem with the legislation and that was the fact that it permitted the delegation of public powers to private officials and that has not changed. The Minister of Corrections knows that that is a major obstacle to allowing the Labour Party to be able to support the legislation. 
I have to say that additionally my colleagues Kris Faafoi and the Hon Phil Goff sat on the Law and Order Committee heard the evidence and discussed that evidence with me and other colleagues and a further concern has arisen around strip-searching which I will refer to later in my remarks. And there is yet a third concern with this legislation now. The Minister foreshadowed the Supplementary Order Paper 171 that she proposes to move in respect of the smoking ban. Very properly she consulted about that Supplementary Order Paper but it too has problems and I will speak to those in my concluding remarks. 
I want first to deal with the Labour Party’s original main ground for opposing this bill. That is the fundamental objection that we take to involving any actor other than the State in the business of corrections. We believe in a hands-on active Government approach to reducing reoffending and we are concerned about the sorts of perverse incentives that introducing the private sector’s profit motive to the system will bring. We strongly oppose privatised prisons and this bill extends the powers that can be delegated by the Chief Executive of the Department of Corrections to prison managers and staff in privately managed prisons. That is the fundamental reason why we cannot support it. We believe that prison management involving as it does the removal of freedom from those who are incarcerated is and must remain a core role of the State and it is not something that should be run as a profit-oriented commercial interest. The logic of the system is all about reducing reoffending. The logic of the profit motive is all about expanding the offender pool. 
If anybody needs to see the evidence for that they can see the powerful lobbyists who have operated in California so effectively for the last 20 years in the interests of those who have managed private prisons and have sought to expand rather than sensibly contract the corrections system in that state. We do not want to see that phenomenon becoming the model that we follow in New Zealand. International experience simply does not support the privatisation of prisons or of other core services. It shows that the private sector does not provide a more effective or less expensive prison system. We think that the motivation for introducing the private sector to the prison system in New Zealand is purely ideological. It will not work. We have warned against it consistently and we maintain our opposition to it in the context of this bill. 
One just needs to look at the experience of Serco which has some very good staff—I acknowledge that. I visited the facility that it manages in Auckland and it has got people who really want to do a very good job. But the entire system is built around processing inmates. It is a sausage factory. It simply cannot effectively reduce reoffending in the way that we would want to see. If you look at the controversy that has surrounded Serco’s management of Mt Eden prison and of facilities in the United Kingdom and in Australia the logic of this argument starts to become clear. The record of Serco in its first year of operations at Mt Eden prison has been poor. It has failed to meet 17 out of 37 performance standards requiring sanctions to be imposed on it for wrongful detention wrongful release and escape of inmates. 
I was interested to read the other day in the  
Guardian 
 that the Standing Committee on Justice and Legal Affairs Committee in the House of Commons has just produced a damning report into a similar attempt to privatise a core function of the State and that is the court interpreting services. It has been described by the committee in the House of Commons as shambolic and MPs have warned that it has caused trials to collapse and suspects to be remanded unnecessarily in custody. That is the consequence of introducing the private sector into functions that ought to be by their very nature the core role of an active State that actually understands its mission and carries out its functions effectively. 
A second ground of concern as I said emerged during the evidence that was given at the select committee. The Minister I think was a little selective in her description of that evidence. This relates to the changes to the rules governing strip-searching. They are of grave concern to members on this side and they form the second basis for our opposition to this legislation at this stage. As we heard in the previous speech there are currently two types of strip-search procedures that can be undertaken under the law. One is for routine cases such as when inmates have been on work parties outside the prison and another is a more intrusive procedure where somebody in authority has reasonable cause to believe that there are items of contraband that are concealed on the inmate. In respect of the second type of procedure there is a more intrusive search procedure permitted. It involves using lights and mirrors to magnify the genital and anal areas of the inmate. The bill proposes to make that second procedure the standard one for all strip-searches. 
This was opposed in particular by the Corrections Association of New Zealand the association of prison officers—the people who actually work at the coalface in our prisons. They say that making that more intrusive procedure the standard one will be provocative and it will put corrections officers their members at greater risk of assault. We do not want to see that happen. Furthermore we think that the evidence demonstrates that making this more intrusive type of procedure simply is not necessary. There has been a dramatic improvement over the last 15 years for example in the reduction in drug use within the prisons. This seems to suggest that existing search measures are working well and that the more intrusive searching procedure in the case of routine strip-searches simply is not warranted. This was reinforced by a range of credible submitters including the Office of the Ombudsmen the New Zealand Law Society and the Salvation Army. They drew attention to the risk of abuse of such procedures which the Ombudsman pointed out has regrettably happened in the past. 
The third basis on which Labour will oppose this legislation is the Supplementary Order Paper concerning smoking in prisons which the Minister referred to briefly at the end of her speech. At the time that Judith Collins introduced the ban members will remember that we were supportive of it. We think that it has worked well. I have been to a number of prisons and I have seen that it has a good effect on morale and discipline although regretfully as far as anybody can measure it the recidivism rate for people going back to smoking once they leave prison seems to be quite high. But at the time that the ban was introduced we warned that it should be put on a better legal footing than it has been. The decision was made simply to introduce the ban administratively—to allow prison managers to make rules as to tobacco as contraband and disciplinary offences for possessing and using it and it was asserted by the Minister at the time in her typically cavalier fashion that this would do. Well she has put taxpayers at risk through her approach just as she did with the David Bain matter and just as she has with the bungled appointment of the Director of Human Rights Proceedings. 
Again we see this cavalier approach coming through. Mrs Tolley has been given the job of trying to rescue the situation and I pay tribute to her for that but we are not sure that this provision will actually be effective. The ban has been declared ineffective by the High Court. The Supplementary Order Paper will provide that “no proceedings may be brought against the Crown questioning the validity of any rules or regulations referred to in subsection (1).” There are major concerns about whether that is going to be effective. Because we warned about this some time ago we simply cannot— 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch) 
: I am sorry to interrupt the honourable member his time has expired.