Mapp Wayne: Corrections Bill — In Committee Speaker Recalled In Committee 
Mapp Wayne: Corrections Bill — In Committee Speaker Recalled In Committee 
[Volume:617;Page:13149] 
Dr WAYNE MAPP (National—North Shore) 
: 
 This bill will become a monument to ideology. The last speaker for the Government Mr Robson went on— 
Hon Matt Robson 
: The honourable. 
Dr WAYNE MAPP 
: The Hon Matt Robson the former Minister of Corrections was proud of conjugal rights—let us remember that reality. He is so obsessed with the idea of private prisons that he can only condemn them by suggesting that nuclear weapons would be manufactured in them. One assumes that he did actually visit the private remand prison in Auckland. I can tell the Minister because I have visited it as well as Mount Eden Prison and Paremoremo prison that there was a truly remarkable difference between those institutions and the remand prison. If the member had taken the time and trouble when he was the Minister of Corrections to visit it we would not have this bill before us today. 
The reality is—and the Minister in the chair today Mr Swain knows this—that this Government will be judged on this ideological perspective. That is how this bill will go down in history. The former Minister may well talk about the need to modernise the corrections law and no doubt there was a case for consolidating and updating it but I do not think that there was any need to put in the legislation things like the requirement for prisoners to have clean bedding and to state that bedding had to be laundered carefully and thoroughly. 
Brian Connell 
: What about separate beds? 
Dr WAYNE MAPP 
: And separate beds—no topping and tailing I guess. In addition to that the legislation specifically provides that prisoners have to be fed—as if somehow New Zealanders would lose their collective sense of responsibility and as if somehow we would mistrust our corrections service so much that we would think it would firstly starve prisoners to death and secondly put them in cells with absolutely no bedding whatsoever. To have that sort of thing in legislation frankly brings this House into discredit. Actually it does not bring this House into discredit; it brings into discredit the Government responsible for that kind of legislation. 
National is deeply opposed to the ideological perspectives of this bill. We are opposed to the whole idea of ignoring best practice. The Ministers know full well that the private prison in Auckland the remand prison has been both effectively and well managed and has done its job more cheaply than the public sector prisons. For instance the cost of keeping a prisoner per annum in the private prison was $45000 compared with $54000 in the public sector. [ 
Interruption 
] Government members may well deny those kinds of figures but that was what the report stated. Yet for the sake of ideology they would turn their backs on that experience. 
The other thing I note is that we have been going through a long-running prison construction programme including a prison in the northern Waikato costing approximately $250 million per prison. It is noteworthy that the private remand prison in Auckland cost $40 million. So we would have to wonder why its cost was less than is expected for the Waikato prison. Auckland Central Remand Prison is regarded as an excellent prison. Even though it is primarily for remand prisoners it is the sort of prison that can actually be used as a long-term prison. Why do I say that? One of the wings in fact has sentenced prisoners in it—those who undertake the work in the prison. And those prisoners apply to go to that prison. 
Judith Collins 
: They do; it’s a privilege. 
Dr WAYNE MAPP 
: It is a privilege as has been noted by my colleague Judith Collins for sentenced prisoners to go to that remand prison to undertake the work there. That surely is a testament to the quality of the management of that prison and I am sure the Minister will well know the incredible enthusiasm the staff of that organisation has had which is in marked contrast to the tone of the public prisons. So this bill is a monument to the Government’s ideology. 
I want to conclude on this point: we will reverse the Government’s policy and we will be able to do that within 12 months because there will be a change of Government.