Robson Matt: Corrections Bill — In Committee Speaker Recalled In Committee 
Robson Matt: Corrections Bill — In Committee Speaker Recalled In Committee 
[Volume:617;Page:13146] 
Hon MATT ROBSON (Deputy Leader—Progressive) 
: 
 This part of the Corrections Bill is the tidying up and after looking at Parts 2 and 3 members are supposed to be discussing the overall purpose of the bill. But clearly the Opposition sensing that there may be some votes in scaremongering and worrying people with fears they need not hold is using this opportunity in its usual irresponsible manner. Opposition members are not dealing with the real issues that either the Department of Corrections or the Ministry of Justice needs to deal with. Instead they are hopefully stampeding some misinformed or ill-informed people into voting for them when really when those members are in Government they face the same problems every Government does which is to try to use the best practice to reduce the prison population—or at least that is what Governments should do. So in the speeches on this bill I am not surprised at the low level of the Opposition’s contributions and the misinformation it has supplied on most of the major issues. 
The bill has been in its genesis for quite some time including during the time when National members of Parliament were corrections Ministers. I discussed this bill with the Hon Clem Simich who was my predecessor and I had some sensible discussions—some but not all—with the Hon Nick Smith on this matter. Those discussions were rational because they were in private. I must say that Clem Simich is always rational even when he is allowed by the National Party to discuss these matters publicly but in private those members recognised that there were some very pedestrian matters to deal with. 
The first pedestrian matter this bill deals with—which is why it is called the Corrections Bill—is the updating of the Penal Institutions Act of 1954 and those sections of the Criminal Justice Act that apply to the Corrections Bill. Most of those are largely matter of fact. Secondly what the bill does is build upon those parts of corrections practice that we know work; not because a politician has decided they will work but because professional people in the field victims and offenders have been able to comment on what aspects of corrections practice are most effective—and they are in the bill. 
If people took the trouble to work through the bill they would also be able to see that we have incorporated best practice not only from our own corrections system but also from overseas jurisdictions. But it does come down to questions of ideology for those parties that say that the most effective form of corrections system is to have a total punishment regime. I am—or I thought I would be—surprised by the concentration on punishment by so many speakers in the Opposition including the Hon Tony Ryall Mr Stephen Franks and Mr Marc Alexander. I wonder whether most of those speakers had a very very severe background in terms of educational upbringing in boys’ boarding schools. It seems so. But that focus on punishment even if it meets some psychological need of those people does not work in practice and the focus in a corrections system has to be on the question of what happens when people leave the prison system. So quite sensibly the Corrections Bill in its philosophical framework deals with what can be best done in a prison for the different range of offenders there and also points to the re-integrative practices that have to come into being. 
We should celebrate—and I believe that victims in particular will—the fact that restorative justice processes are now an integral part of the corrections system. In terms of practice most New Zealand prisons have been carrying out restorative justice processes for quite some time and they have had some amazing results. But now that is part of the Corrections Bill. It is also part of three other major planks in the criminal justice system and also in Acts that deal with victims. So that is a substantial victory for common sense and for best practice in this particular bill. 
The issue of the private prison has loomed large for a number of reasons. I accept that some members have just fallen prey to the spin of the private company that manages the Auckland Central Remand Prison. That private company could manufacture bicycles nuclear weapons or run prisons; it is purely for profit. The ideology came in when the National Government introduced the provision to allow for the contracting out of prisons. It was absolving itself of the responsibility of the social issues that go with prisons.