Goff Phil: Corrections Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Goff Phil: Corrections Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
[Sitting date: 12 February 2013. Volume:687;Page:7743. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Hon PHIL GOFF (Labour—Mt Roskill) 
: 
 Labour has three basic concerns about this legislation the Corrections Amendment Bill. The first is that it takes us further down the track of taking a core State function and making it into a commercial enterprise that is profit driven. We believe that basic State functions whether it is prisons which deprive people of their liberty whether it is the police or whether it is the armed services are core State functions and they should be carried out by the State. What this National Government is basically saying to the country is that it is going to put a billion dollars into the pockets of Serco which has an appalling track record across the world and that money will flow out of the country. We will end up with second-rate prisons because they have cut staffing they have made the conditions worse— 
Hon Member 
: Rubbish! 
Hon PHIL GOFF 
: —and they have undermined the prison’s ability to carry out its basic functions. You might say rubbish but look at the track record of Serco in its first year. 
The second thing we are against is changing the process so that the most intimate form of strip-searching—that is illuminating the genital and the anal area with a mirror and with lights—will be used in routine cases instead of where there is reasonable cause to suspect. Jacqui Dean says that this will help prison officers. I want to tell Jacqui Dean that the prison officers came along to the select committee and said: “This makes our job harder. This raises tension.” And the Ombudsman came along to the select committee and said: “We have seen more than we should have of the use of this sort of strip-searching as a way of demeaning and deliberately humiliating the prisoners.” What is it about the Ombudsman’s report and the former inspector of prisons who made that report that the National Party members of this select committee do not understand? There is no good reason for a more intimate form of strip-searching. 
Since the changes made under the Labour Government we have seen drug use in prison positive drug-testing go from 36 percent of inmates down to 5 percent today. They were changes made under a Labour Government. We had the Law Society saying there is no good cause as to why this intimate and intrusive form of strip-searching should be introduced. The figures are going in the right direction and yet this Government is coming along and saying: “We are going to do something that the Ombudsman the Law Society and the prison officers themselves say will be abused and will make things harder for those who have the tough job of working in prisons.” 
The third thing we are concerned about is that this bill seeks retrospectively to patch up the botched job done by Judith Collins on smoke-free prisons. I believe in smoke-free prisons but you have got to have legislative authority before you act. That is something that a Government should understand. Judith Collins was more interested in being the show pony and doing the political spin than she was in getting the law right. The courts have said to this National Government: “You have taken an action that is unlawful.” Now it comes back crawls back into the House and says: “Now we have got to patch it up.” We have got to bring in retrospective legislation in an endeavour to get right what it should have got right in the first place. 
I am tired of this Government stuffing up things because it does not put the attention into the detail whether it is prisons education or foreign affairs and defence. Time and again we see these botch ups because of an incompetent Government. 
Sitting suspended from 6 p.m. to 7.30 p.m. 
Hon PHIL GOFF 
: I was saying before the dinner break that there are three concerns that we have with this legislation. The first concern is the latest Supplementary Order Paper from the Minister Supplementary Order Paper 171 which corrects a monumental botch-up. The Minister I recall back in 2010 and 2011 announced with great flair that prisons would become smoke-free. Well I am actually in favour of that. But she was warned at the time that she needed to have the legislative authority to do that and unlike Henry VIII she could not simply make a pronouncement. But a pronouncement she did make; yes and the inevitable happened. The court ruled that she had no authority to do that. I do not know about the rest of the House but I am sick and tired of Ministers not doing their homework botching up their portfolios and then coming back with a request for retrospective legislation to put right what they should never have got wrong in the first place. So that is the first concern. 
The second concern is about the proposal in this bill for what is called intrusive strip-searching. There are two forms of strip-searching that are available to prisons. One is where it is a routine; the person may be required to squat which may force out anything that they have concealed internally. The more intrusive form is to illuminate the genital and anal areas with both lighting and a mirror. The chair of the select committee said before the break that this would help the prison officers. That is not their view. Their view is very clearly set out in the submissions they made. They do not support this provision. This is the prison officers. They are a pretty tough hard-headed lot. They say that “It is a serious impingement on the dignity of prisoners and also the staff having to conduct such searches … If staff have reason to believe that there is contraband within a prisoner we have the ability to place a prisoner in a “dry cell” under observation for a period of time and wait for the contraband to be passed … To include such an invasive procedure like this [the association] believes will result in an increase in staff assaults.” 
You know you can use the more intrusive method under current law if there is reasonable cause to believe that there are things concealed but not for a routine search and that is what is being proposed here. It is not only the prison officers who have to carry that out who are objecting to it; the Ombudsman says this about it: “Such strip-searches are highly degrading and prone to abuse. We are concerned that they may become a matter of routine on any occasion when a strip-search is conducted following the movement of a prisoner or a visit. At present strip-searches may only be conducted when there are reasonable grounds to believe a prisoner has an unauthorised item.” 
The Law Society likewise says it does not accept that these more invasive measures should be available in respect of all strip-searches. It makes the point that the positive drug-testing rates have dropped significantly without these additional mechanisms. In fact shortly before Labour became the Government the positive drug-testing in prisons was 36 percent of all prisoners testing positive for having taken drugs. By the time the National Government came to power and because of the changes that Labour made in office that had dropped to 5 percent—from over one-third down to 5 percent—all without this extra required measure. 
I have got to say that when we visited Rimutaka Prison—and Asenati Lole-Taylor was with us at the time—I asked the prison manager there of one of the biggest prisons in the country: “If somebody has something concealed internally will this more intrusive manner show it up?”. He said “No”. If they have it concealed internally this will not work. There are other things—there is scanning of prisoners there is what they call the “boss chair” that they have got in Auckland and there is a dry cell. All of these mechanisms are available. This measure is not justified. This measure will cause problems; it will not help. 
I want to come back to our fundamental concern about this bill and it is that this bill further entrenches privatisation of prisons. It turns what should be properly a State function into something that is a commercial business for profit. We saw Serco the agency that is getting these private contracts going to the London Stock Exchange late last year and saying it expects to make $30 million a year. That is $30 million a year out of the New Zealand taxpayers’ pockets to a multinational corporation that will repatriate that money back to where the shareholders live. What good does that do to New Zealand? No evidence has been shown that it will do it cheaper or more effectively—no evidence. To the contrary. What have we seen from Serco in the last year? It had 34 measures of its performance. It failed 19 of them—19. Serco let prisoners go that it should have kept on a number of occasions it retained prisoners that it should have released and of course it had an escape—and this was from a brand new prison the easiest prison in the country to operate and Serco stuffed it up. We are paying for it to do that. 
How does Serco make its profit? It cuts down the staff numbers it reduces the working conditions in the prison and it does not meet its responsibilities in the way it should to ensure public safety. So why is this Government apart from for purely ideological reasons going down the track of giving private contractors more and more power? They are out to make money. They are not out to look after public safety or to do a good job in not only keeping the prisoners secure but also rehabilitating them. This bill is wrong on that ground and that is why the Labour Party will be opposing it.