O'Connor Damien: Estimates Debate — In Committee 
O'Connor Damien: Estimates Debate — In Committee 
[Volume:640;Page:10510] 
Hon DAMIEN O'CONNOR (Minister of Corrections) 
: 
 It is hard to know whether that speech justifies any reaction but on behalf of the over 5000 people who work in the Department of Corrections I will stand up and explain what we do because those people end up being the whipping boy too often for too many people in this country. They end up being a mere target for the National Party—a party that has not one policy in the area of corrections. I am sorry; it has two policies. One is to privatise the prison system and the other is to do away with parole. Both those policies are quite frankly ridiculous. 
The Department of Corrections does a very good job by any international measure and it does so in a very difficult area. Over the last 7 years we have increased the prison capacity by 2100 beds. It has cost over a billion dollars. We do not like spending money on prisons in this country but we came into Government facing a system that had been left to languish and had been run down under the likes of Nick Smith and other Ministers. We grasped the mantle and we built over 2100 new cells in this country to address the sad but realistic situation that New Zealand locks up people at the second-highest rate in the Western World. That is something we are not proud of. No one in this country should be proud of that. 
Every year the corrections system deals with over 68000 sentences in the community. Currently over 8100 people are in prisons around this country. We are determined as a Government to do more than just invest in prisons as we have had to do—and yes we do have underfloor heating because it is the most efficient and safest way to ensure we have minimum standards of heating in our prisons. I make no apologies for that. I make no apologies for building prisons that are of an international standard and will be there for 100 years conducting what is a necessary but sad part of Government responsibility. [ 
Interruption 
] Oh yes Nick Smith is there desperate to try to justify his management of the corrections system in the past. The only thing the previous National Government did was to attempt to start the privatisation of prisons. Those members initially signed a contract with Chubb. They initially built Auckland Central Remand Prison which we took back into the public prison system. 
Correction is a very difficult area of Government responsibility. We will maintain that responsibility under the wing of the Government. We will not attempt to disengage ourselves from that responsibility as the National members have said they would do by privatising prisons. All I would say to those people who think doing that might be better is that they should look offshore. They should look to Australia the US and other areas around the world that have attempted to privatise the prison system. It has failed. 
What we are doing is moving to improve the system we have within prisons in order to ensure that we have better programmes of rehabilitation and we have revamped them. We have invested huge amounts in reintegration so that at sentence end those prisoners will be better able to move back into the community and participate in a worthwhile way. Internationally the sad statistics are that far too many prisoners do reoffend. We are at the forefront of rehabilitation programmes and of initiatives to try to reduce that rate of reoffending. 
I stand up for each and every one of those people who work in the corrections system. Some have broken the rules and some have taken short cuts. We have put in place a new intelligence system whereby skilled people within the corrections system gather intelligence and information. They can identify any prison officer or any person employed by the Department of Corrections who is breaking the law or not abiding by the code of conduct and the policies we have laid down. When we identify one of these individuals and that person is stood down or the matter is taken to the police members of the Opposition stand up and say it is an indication of failure. Well I have to say that we will be identifying more individuals and there are only a few who may have been breaking the law or breaking the code of conduct or our policies. We will identify them because we have better systems of intelligence-gathering within the prison system now and we will be dismissing and prosecuting those people. 
Corrections is a difficult environment. Wherever one has 8000 criminals in any one system there will no doubt be some problems. We are not running kindergartens here—it is a very difficult area. Every measure against the corrections system—assaults on prisoners themselves assaults on staff and escape rates—in international terms has declined dramatically under this Government and will continue to do so. We have invested a huge amount in better security systems drug-dog teams single points of entry 17 kilometres of perimeter fencing and on and on it goes because we are committed to running a properly resourced effective and efficient corrections system in this country and we will continue to do that. 
The only alternative we have heard from the National Party from the bleating of Simon Power and Chester Borrows is that National would privatise the prison system and all parts of it and that it would do away with parole. Well that begs the question—if anyone were to ask anyone intelligent—of how we attempt to reintegrate people back into society when they reach the end of their sentence. Parole is accepted as a key component of any system of corrections incarceration rehabilitation or reintegration—call it what we like. Parole will continue to be part of the system. It must be well managed. We have moved to make changes in that area as we have whenever we have identified a problem within the corrections system or the justice system. 
I look forward to the passage of the Criminal Justice Reform Bill and to the new community sentences that will be brought into place. They will assist us to reduce over time the number of people who have to be sent to prison and ultimately they will reduce the rate of incarceration in this country which is quite frankly a disgrace. This Government will invest in front-end policies like early childhood education Working for Families and social support because we know that ultimately that is the best way to reduce the rate of crime and the rate of incarceration in this country. I applaud the efforts of the people working in the corrections system. I think that they do an outstanding job in the face of very difficult and trying circumstances. 
Chester Borrows 
: Mr Chairman— 
The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Clem Simich) 
: Not on this vote Mr Borrows. You have two calls on Vote Corrections. [ 
Interruption 
] No the member had two calls albeit he did not use too much of the second one.