Ball DarrochDARROCH BALL (NZ First): I don't think that Mr Bishop could fill another five minutes on what he was speaking about last night.It's a pleasure to rise on behalf of New Zealand First to speak on the Corrections Amendment Bill. In reading quickly through the bill it became quite apparent to me that at some stage through the day-to-day operations of corrections at some time they must be let's say pushing the boundaries of the law as written at the moment just to have some day-to-day practical application of dealing with the prisoners because of some of the really I think astounding issues or parts of the legislation that will be covered and amended through this bill. I will get to them in a second.Firstly I just want to address a couple of comments that David Bennett made last night in the House. I'm glad that he's in the House at the moment. It revolves around the National Party's topic du jour at the moment or one of them in regard to criticism of the Labour - New Zealand First coalition Government with the support of the Greens.Hon David Bennett: Soft on crime coalition.DARROCH BALL: Well that's one of them. That's what Mr Bennett says. But one of them is that our aim is to reduce the prison population by 30 percent. First of all the National Party tries to criticise us for trying to do that for attempting to do that. They try and make it sound like it's a bad thing—like it's a bad thing.And then we get the whole: how are you going to do it? Are you going to release prisoners? Are you going to open the doors and release 30 percent of the prisoners? Because that I guess is the limit of the logic of how the National Party members' brains work. But what they don't get is that prison is the end result of a failing justice system. It's not the start of it. It's not where you begin to look at the problems of a failing justice system. That's the end result.So if the National Party and Mr Bennett want to have a more than one-dimensional think about how a prison and corrections system should work then perhaps they should look a lot further before that individual gets into prison and how this Government is proactively going to stop and going to reduce the prison population by 30 percent. Then they might be getting somewhere.Then the National Party and Mr Bennett on multiple occasions have criticised the Government's increase in the police numbers by 1800. The logic that the National Party is using is that more police means more prisoners. Again one-dimensional—looking at the prison and corrections systems as the start the be-all and end-all of when and how and why that person is in prison in the first place.So the logic from the National Party is more police more prisoners—more police more crime apparently. That means if there's more prisoners there's more crime being committed. The logic from the National Party is that the police must be committing the crime. Because if there's more police there's more crime—that's exactly the logic that the National Party is saying. But then if you hit them up about that they say No the police catch the criminals. The police catch more criminals. The police catch more criminals and then they put them in prison and they become part of the corrections system." Well now we know—they've made it quite clear—the National Party's approach and how they could stand there for their entire nine years and say that crime was coming down: they just don't put police out there. If the police go out there then they can catch people committing crime and then they can put them in prison.In any event the last thing that Mr Bennett said that I want to address before I get on to the details of the bill is that—one of the criticisms is that the current Minister left out one of the most important things which is rehabilitation or one of the rehabilitation clauses. Clearly over the last nine years the National Government has failed at improving one iota the rehabilitation of our prisoners—the rehabilitation of prisoners. The evidence can't be more blatant than the skyrocketing prison population—the skyrocketing prison population over the last nine years. What the National Government has done is thrown and lobbed this huge corrections grenade and said "Here catch."And now they've got the gall to stand up and criticise first of all what we're going to do with the outrageous prison population—and not just the prison population but the increasing prison population. They're going to say "What are you going to do? What are you going to do? What are you going to do? How are you going to reduce it? How are you going to reduce it?"—like it's our problem. Hon David Bennett: You're Government now you tosser.DARROCH BALL: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. I'm not sure if you heard that unparliamentary remark but I was offended by it and he needs to withdraw and apologise.ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): I didn't hear the remark.DARROCH BALL: Well Mr Bennett made an unparliamentary remark Mr Assistant Speaker and I'm offended and I want him to withdraw and apologise.ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): I'm going to ask the Hon David Bennett whether or not he did make an unparliamentary remark.Hon David Bennett: I withdraw and apologise.ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): Thank you.DARROCH BALL: Thank you Mr Assistant Speaker.Kieran McAnulty: You're a disgrace.DARROCH BALL: It's unbelievable. No no—I'm not surprised. That's just typical losing the argument and so he has to try and be insulting about it—losing the argument so he has to try and be insulting about it. All right sir. Ha ha!I just want to go through a couple of the points and the details of the bill. Some of them came as quite astounding to me—that they actually existed before we started amending them. And some of them are quite basic and some of them are really just trying to tie up loose ends to ensure that the corrections officers are able to deal with the prisoners in a much more practical and day-to-day better way. Also for the prisoners themselves—not just for the staff it's important for the prisoners as well that we have law in there to protect them as well.So in total there are about 16 of the amendments—but there's a couple of them. There was one addressing self-harm and what the legislation wants to do is to address this by ensuring requirements relating to the assessment and observation of a prisoner and the development of an at-risk plan. That's just common sense. I'm not sure how it was previous to when this law change will occur but it's really just common sense that we are observing individuals who might have some mental health issues and that need a plan an at-risk plan and a review of the prisoner's at-risk status as well.One of the ones that I found surprising is information on disciplinary offences. So when a prisoner first arrives at the corrections facility only now in this legislation with what needs to be amended do the prison managers need to provide newly admitted prisoners with information about disciplinary offences. So basically they've got to tell them what the rules are in the prison. You'd think that that would be common sense—if an individual was first to a corrections facility that they would need to know the rules the ins and outs and whatnot like that.The other one that I found surprising was that it was still in legislation that it was OK to use chains and irons in prisons. Sometimes the corrections officer might want to use them on some of the prisoners because of their behaviour but it is totally not acceptable and it's a good thing that these will be amended.I guess the most applicable one that I'm glad is being amended is any prisoner that has some restrictions on who they can contact and write letters to or just contact in general in the general population—right now before the law has been changed if an individual prisoner is writing a letter to someone and trying to get it to someone that they shouldn't or were not allowed to they would only be committing an offence if they got caught doing that if the corrections officer actually intercepted that letter—not the fact that they intended to or tried to but only if they got caught in the act of doing that. So it's obviously a good thing that—and it needs to be addressed. It's the intent with which the court order's been put on that person not to try and contact the individual.In the last 30 seconds of my speech I just want to highlight something that's written in the impact statement that highlights the current issues and the challenges faced by both prisoners and the staff. It says that "while the proposed provisions are expected to change behaviour of prisoners and corrections staff responsible for the treatment of prisoners and control and command nature of the prison environment it makes it difficult to predict behaviour particularly given that 62 percent of people in prison have recently experienced mental health disorders and 47 percent of people in prison have an addiction problem." That's one of the major aspects of corrections that people need to realise when producing legislation like this. Thank you."