Wall LouisaLOUISA WALL (Labour—Manurewa): Tēnā koe e Te Māngai o Te Whare. Tēnā tātou katoa. I want to talk about the priorities of this Government in investing in the long-term future of New Zealand and I do so from a position of understanding that our prioritisation has been around ensuring that people have the opportunity to own their own homes. So I want to congratulate the Hon Phil Twyford for our KiwiBuild homes becoming available to New Zealanders. It's a huge achievement and something we're incredibly proud of. I also want to focus on the fact that our Families Package has empowered our families to ensure that they can pay their power bills—how about that? And what about putting food on the table? So we are very clear about what investing in the future looks like and I want to take a particular aspect now of that investment in terms of the review of the criminal justice system. The review of the criminal justice system is about rethinking justice. I want to congratulate Minister Little his associate Jan Logie the Parliamentary Under-Secretary to the Minister of Justice with regard to family and sexual violence issues along with Kelvin Davis and Stuart Nash—and particularly the appointment of the Hon Chester Borrows who will chair the criminal justice reform advisory group. The intention of that group is to be smarter than we have been before and to say that actually we need new ways to work with offenders to navigate and to mitigate the causes of crime because the reality for our country is we have over 10000 people in prison and our recidivism rates are shameful. So I want to agree with the Hon Chester Borrows and his stand in opposition to tough-on-crime policies like three strikes like longer sentences and like stricter bail rules. Actually I'll quote from him: Political parties' self-interest in staying in power have driven those particular pieces of legislation." So it's time that we get smart and I think this smart aspect of the reform is actually about investment. How are we going to invest in these captured audiences to some degree—how are we going to help transform the lives of the people who are in our prisons and what does a good life for people mean? From my perspective it means that people are actually being happy. Happiness is something that's underestimated. To be happy you have to be satisfied you have to be content you have to have a feeling of joy and you actually have to have a sense of meaning in your life and herein lies the whole issue about investing in the future because spending $100000 per prisoner per annum is not an investment if after five years 80 percent of them are back in prison. That is a terrible waste of money. So for us what does that look like? It actually looks like a programme that a woman called Whiti Timutimu who is the Māori responsiveness adviser with the New Zealand Police has been working on with the Department of Corrections. So on Monday with my colleague the Hon Meka Whaitiri with Prue Kapua the president of the Māori Women's Welfare League with Whaea Mamae from our Waikato-Tainui rōpū and with Jenny-May Clarkson we went into the South Auckland women's correctional facility. What did we do? We actually had a whakawhanaungatanga event. They have what's called a mana wahine programme. Within that facility they've created a mirimiri te aroha group and it's actually based on cultural identity. So what they've taught these women to do is to be proficient in Te Reo and to be proficient in kapa haka with the goal that when they leave that prison they have the resilience to never return. So I see a transformation already within the criminal justice system because—guess why? We were actually allowed to go in. It's not about punishment; it's actually about investing in the women and men who are incarcerated in our correctional facilities and investing in their ability—as I outlined before—to be happy. So I want to commend corrections—Lyn O'Connor is the manager of that facility—I want to commend the police and actually I want to commend our iwi because I know that Ngati Porou and I know that Tainui are putting up their hands and saying "We want our women to come home. We want to support them. We want to ensure we break the cycle." That's what investing in New Zealanders looks like and I'm incredibly proud to belong to a Government that does that. Kia ora. The debate having concluded the motion lapsed."