Ryall Tony: Corrections Bill — Third Reading 
Ryall Tony: Corrections Bill — Third Reading 
[Volume:617;Page:13337] 
Hon TONY RYALL (National—Bay of Plenty) 
: 
 Within 18 months this Corrections Bill will be repealed. This bill will be gone by this time next year because it is a shameful backward step in corrections policy in this country. That is for a number of reasons not the least of which is that it makes it illegal for the Government to contract private companies to manage the New Zealand prison service. 
Since 1999 Australasian Correctional Management has run our only private prison the Auckland Central Remand Prison. Throughout this entire debate we heard Government Ministers say that prisons by their nature involve the use of highly coercive powers against individuals and that only the State should be able to wield such powers. Every Opposition party—even United Future which supports the Government on matters of confidence and supply—was opposed to that because as we pointed out clearly in the quote from Professor Charles Logan: “Keepers do not take away anyone’s freedom; catchers and convicters and sentencers do so”. There is an important difference between the power to deny liberty and the job of carrying out those orders. It is a remarkable ideological leap that sees this Government at the same time that it is opposing private prisons inviting the private sector to provide prisoner custody services between prisons and courthouses. So it is apparently OK for the private sector to use coercive powers between courts and prisons but not OK for it to use them actually in prisons. 
The overriding international evidence is that private prisons are highly successful. The Australians the British the South Africans the Canadians and the Americans are all expanding their use of private prisons. As incarceration rates increase around the world Governments have looked to the private sector to build new facilities and to provide for future prisoner numbers. In fact it is reported that the Labour Prime Minister in Britain wants all new prisons there to be built and operated by the private sector. 
Internationally the private sector operates at considerable cost efficiency compared with the public sector. Numerous reputable studies have concluded that the private sector operates prisons at least 5 to 15 percent more cheaply than the public sector does. In Britain a study undertaken in 1996 by Coopers and Lybrand for Her Majesty’s Prison Service concluded that the private sector there provided operational savings of between 13 and 22 percent over the public sector. Here in New Zealand the private prison in Auckland operates at a cost of $43000 per prisoner per year with a mix of low and high-security prisoners in a high-security environment whereas the public prison service costs $54000 per minimum-security prisoner per year and $72000 per high-security prisoner per year. For members opposite that is information they can rely on. 
What is clear is that although private prisons are cheaper that efficiency does not come at the cost of quality. The head of Britain’s National Audit Office advised the Government there after a major review of prisons in Britain that competition has helped drive up standards and improve efficiency across the prison system as a whole. It compared Britain’s private and public prisons across a checklist of quality criteria such as prisoner safety assaults and purposeful work. It concluded with one exception that private prisons provided a service of a superior quality compared with that of public prisons. 
 Here in New Zealand the private prison received strong support from the Maori community and it must be an embarrassment for the Government when the Iwi Whanui o Tamaki-makau-rau talks about the premier service provided to their people by that prison in a firm environment. 
Hon Parekura Horomia 
: We want Maori out of there. 
Hon TONY RYALL 
: I presume Mr Horomia is talking about Maori getting out of the prisons but I do not see anything that this Minister is doing to try to stop the levels of Maori reoffending and reoffending by the general public as a whole. This Minister instead of throwing away taxpayers’ money like confetti on capacity-building programmes would be much better off doing something about reducing the reoffending rate amongst his people. If he put as much effort into trying to stop Maori reoffending or reoffending throughout the community as he has into greasing his popularity with the Prime Minister and ensuring his position in Cabinet this country would be a much better place. 
What is wrong with this bill is it gives sweeping new rights and privileges to prisoners with an uncompleted cheque from the New Zealand taxpayers. It is an open cheque because the Government has no idea what the cost of these new rights and privileges will be. We have warned the Government time and time again that it does not know what it is doing. Surely we have seen with the Crimes Amendment Bill (No 2) that the Government should not rely on what its Ministers tell them is in a bill. 
I will tell the House about some of the risks imposed by this bill. This bill will require the Department of Corrections to take into account the cultural background ethnic identity and language of inmates in managing sentences. What will the impact on the system be of having the chief executive charged with catering for the “various religious and spiritual needs of prisoners”? What is the boundary of that duty? That clause may try to clarify it but again this bill allows for uncertainty and that can be costly. The Government should be mindful that prisoners can be litigious and the statutory rights proposed by this bill coupled with its foolish principles could be further defined and expanded by the courts. Parliament should be crystal-clear on what it intends to have available in terms of the statutory entitlements. 
Here is another example: the bill enshrines in legislation rights for prisoners that were previously detailed in regulations. There is a sweeping new right for prisoners to access information and education. Prisoners will be entitled—not permitted but entitled—to access further education that will help their rehabilitation. Although the Government has included a few words to try to limit the cost the point is there is considerable risk and uncertainty in this area that invites prisoners into the courts to gain an expensive education at taxpayers’ expense. 
Some of the earliest provisions in this bill to be repealed will be this Government’s foolish decision to legislate the current integrated offender management system into the law. It is a system that this Government uses for managing prisoners’ individual needs within the prison environment but as we said time and time again in this debate there are other ways of operating prisons. Penal policies come and go and the strategies and philosophies that this liberal social-engineering Government has foisted on the corrections system may not be what a Government of the future proposes to follow. 
The National Party strongly opposes this bill. It could have been a great opportunity for Parliament to bring the corrections legislation into the 21st century. It could have been a wonderful opportunity to put public safety and the rights of victims to the fore. But we heard in the Committee stage from Judith Collins MP that this bill with over 8500 lines had only two sentences and one word devoted to the rights of victims and that is why this bill must go.