Lee Melissa: Corrections (Contract Management of Prisons) Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Lee Melissa: Corrections (Contract Management of Prisons) Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
[Sitting date: 17 November 2009. Volume:659;Page:7741. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
MELISSA LEE (National) 
: 
 After hearing that speech all I can do is echo some of the thoughts from this side of the House. What is the fear on the Opposition side of the House? Fear of change is irrational. All I can say is that because Labour has so much fear of change perhaps it will continue to languish in the bottom 2 percent. Is that right? Two percent? Well that rating will continue. I start with that point. Members opposite should remember that a new broom sweeps clean. 
If we listened to members opposite we would think that privatisation is what we are doing. We are talking about private management of prisons. We are not actually selling the prisons or the prison services—just the management of prisons. Members should just read the title of the bill—it is the Corrections (Contract Management of Prisons) Amendment Bill. The purpose of the bill is to provide opportunity for innovation and change—I know that might be scary for the Opposition—through independent prison service providers to ensure effective and efficient provision of prison services and to enable the Government to look for cost savings in the overall delivery of prisons. These are three purposes of this bill. 
Public safety is the top priority of the corrections system. We owe it to the public to provide the best practice possible and the best options to improve the safe and effective management of offenders. In different bills being debated in this House many have spoken—and I too spoke about this earlier today—about the need for New Zealand to align itself to the international best practice to make sure that we compete with the rest of the world on the same footing. 
I believe that the corrections system must also have a world-class standard. I am not talking about providing inmates with world-class hotel accommodation. I am talking about providing world-class innovation and expertise in order to deliver the very best corrections service for New Zealand. To do that we need to be exposed to what is happening around the world. We need to allow competition in the form of bids in order to provide the best possible outcome for our corrections service and the aim of this bill will in the end determine whether a local or an international bidder provides the service. 
Personally I want effective and safe prisons where inmates achieve better outcomes than they do now. During the select committee process—where we debated the issues quite robustly as one can imagine—one of the key points I kept coming back to was that the prison management contracts would demand objectives and performance standards that are no lower than for publicly run prisons. There will have to have better outcomes. Otherwise what would be the point? 
The other point that appeals to me is that when the private management contract of Auckland Central Remand Prison ended in 2005 many of the benefits and improvements of the management were retained by the prison services when they took back the management of the prison. They retained the improvements that had been made. 
The other point I would like to make is in relation to the very high number of Maori inmates in our prisons. Contract management of prisons and private prison services are as has been proven by past experience more open to direct Maori involvement and this hands a potential opportunity to Maori inmates to achieve better outcomes. Perhaps given the opportunity they may achieve the rehabilitation and reintegration process they have so missed out on. 
My colleague Sandra Goudie said earlier that Labour killed the Auckland Central Remand Prison private management deal. The Iwi Whanui o Tamaki-makau-rau publicly criticised the Labour Government’s decision to return it to public management: “Auckland Central Remand Prison is quite rightly regarded as the most innovative effective and culturally safe prison in New Zealand history.” That comment was made by the chair of Iwi Whanui o Tamaki-makau-rau Te Warena Taua in 2003. 
In 2003 Mr Taua also said: “We strongly believe that removing the ACRP management contract and preventing any further like it represents the biggest step backwards in terms of prison management particularly in the areas of inmate management and rehabilitation.” This bill provides that opportunity. What are we scared of? Let us give them a chance. I commend this bill to the House.