Power Simon: General Debate 
Power Simon: General Debate 
[Volume:630;Page:2702] 
SIMON POWER (National—Rangitikei) 
: 
 I have a bit of advice for Clayton Cosgrove: the Cabinet reshuffle is over. He can relax now. He does not have to come down to the House and try to outperform his colleagues. 
The colleague sitting next to Clayton Cosgrove is Mr Paul Swain and this House has never seen him look as relaxed as he has in recent months. Initially members of this House thought it was good on the Hon Paul Swain for making a lifestyle decision to spend time with his young child. That was a very wise decision in my view. But actually in recent weeks we have discovered why Paul Swain is looking so relaxed. It is because he has nothing to do with the Department of Corrections any more. He is a mile away from it and he is loving it. Paul Swain is nodding away furiously there. He loves the fact that those problems have now been landed on the lap of his good friend Damien O’Connor. Every time a question about the Department of Corrections is raised in this House or a press release goes out the word around the building is that Mr Swain leans back in his chair puts his hands behind his head and says he thanks goodness he has nothing to do with that department any more. 
We discovered over the adjournment that more and more problems are coming out of the Department of Corrections. My personal favourite was the fact that in these times of fiscal prudence the taxpayer will spend $11 million on landscaping four prisons. It does not matter which way the public looks at it; that is a lot of ferns and a lot of pavers. The Government is trying to spin the line that certain environmental standards set by certain local councils have to be met in order for prisons to be built in their areas. That is not the case in terms of two out of four of those prisons. In Spring Hill’s case we will spend $4.34 million on landscaping that prison. Members may call me old-fashioned but I always thought that prisons were supposed to be a bit unpleasant and that the outlook for prisoners was not supposed to be particularly scenic. But this Government has no compunction at all in dealing out hard-earned taxpayers’ money in a way that leads us to believe the only thing that will happen to Paul Swain over the next 6 months is that he is likely to become more and more relaxed and more and more happy. 
I can tell this House and I can tell Damien O’Connor his staff and his department that the Department of Corrections is leaking like a sieve. If that Minister thinks that the leaked internal memo presented to the House today is the last of it let me reassure him that it is the first of it. The Department of Corrections is leaking like a sieve and there is much more to come. So during the time that we have a $490 million budget blowout on the new prisons what does the Department of Corrections decide to do for the individual charged with overseeing the construction programme? 
Mark Blumsky 
: Pay him more. 
SIMON POWER 
: Pay him more. So $1000 a day plus GST when the original contracts—I was going to say were tendered but that is not quite right I say to Mr Mark. They were never tendered originally nor were they tendered at the second bite. I say to Mr Swain that it was only the third bite that saw those contracts tendered. In the meantime we have seen the people in charge of producing those prisons have a 30 percent pay increase taking their pay to $1800 a day plus GST. That is $2 million over the time the prison-building project has taken so far to the point where nearly half a billion dollars has blown out in that budget. 
That money could have been spent on quality rehabilitation programmes. That money could have been spent on quality employment programmes for inmates. But no that money is being paid out to an entity and an ex-Department of Corrections individual who are completely wrecking the building project process by having those budget blowouts. Then what does the Government do? It pays the individual concerned more for the privilege of doing that which is just extraordinary. 
On top of that in recent weeks we have seen such a range of appalling revelations in the corrections area that I predict Paul Swain will grow hair over the next 6 months because he will be so relaxed. He will grow hair and it will go from a distinguished grey to a young fawn brown colour as all the pressure lifts off his shoulders. I predict that all the hair dye in the world will not save Damien O’Connor from going grey over the next 6 months because we have only just begun on our revelations.