Bishop ChrisCHRIS BISHOP (National—Hutt South): A very senior member of this House by the name of Steve Maharey used to have a saying That's the sort of thing you say in Opposition not what you say in Government" and that is exactly what the Labour Party and the Green Party are like when it comes to this bill. When they were in Opposition double-bunking was the end of the world. It was a disaster. It was a breach of human rights. We had to get rid of it. Rehabilitation was the way to go. And now what do we have? Well we have a poorly performing Minister who has been given all of the work by Louise Upston and the National Government turning up into the House and somehow he has managed to make a good bill deficient. Somehow with the best of intentions he has managed to make what was actually a series of sensible progressive reform changes to our corrections system worse because he has made it easier to do to allow cell sharing and double-bunking and he has taken out the rehabilitation components of the Corrections Amendment Bill. It's exactly as my colleague Dr Nick Smith said: it's all very well to talk in Opposition but a lot harder to do the mahi in Government. Actually that's what the Labour Party is finding because it's all very well to say "We'll have 100000 homes." "We're going to eradicate child poverty." and "Climate change is our nuclear-free moment." but governing is harder and it actually requires doing real work. It requires a Minister who knows what they're doing and this one does not. So the Labour Party in Government is discovering that it's not as simple as simply spouting rhetoric and talking in feel-good ways and talking in buzzwords. Actually it's a lot harder. So we have this bill which is generally sensible but makes it easier to double-bunk. Frankly I don't know how the Green Party can sit there and vote for this piece of legislation. The Green Party likes to get on their high horse at every available opportunity and frankly even when there aren't available opportunities they like to climb on that high horse of moral righteousness and probity and they like to lecture those of us in Parliament about how only they have the true path to greatness and virtue and all of the things that are great and well in the world yet we have the Green Party here—Chlöe Swarbrick and James Shaw are in the House—and in a few minutes' time they are going to vote to make it easier to double-bunk. I just want them and their supporters out there—who I know are listening at 9.41 p.m. on a Tuesday night—to reflect on the tawdry Government they have become a part of. They need to reflect on what exactly they are getting out of this arrangement because they are having to vote for a bill that makes it easy to double-bunk and that has removed the rehabilitation requirements in the legislation and what do they get for that? They get a climate change bill that's stalled they get a bit of extra money for conservation and they have to prop up Winston Peters as Deputy Prime Minister. The Greens need to reflect on the tawdry deal they have done and the lack of leverage they have in this relationship. I just make that point as an aside and say that they should be ashamed to vote for themselves. I do want to pick up on a comment that Darroch Ball made because that's the other thing about the Greens: they have to sit there and vote for a Government where Darroch Ball has more power than they do. That must be a very depressing prospect when one wakes up in the morning. Darroch Ball made a series of pretty outrageous statements. Darroch Ball said the last National Government did nothing about rehabilitation. Well a few facts for Darroch Ball: when the National Government came into power in 2008 very very little money was spent on literacy and numeracy and I actually looked these statistics up the other day. Do you know how much the literacy and numeracy budget for prisoners went up when National was in Government? I couldn't believe it. It was 500 percent—500 percent. It quintupled—it quintupled. The reason for that was that the National Party recognised in Government that it is exactly as Kelvin Davis likes to talk about: it's giving prisoners the skills so when they leave they can go out and get jobs and transition into the workforce so that they don't go back into prison. When we came into Government very few prisoners—in the hundreds; not even in the thousands—were getting literacy and numeracy support. Madam Deputy Speaker I know you know a lot about this: a succession of National Ministers pumped money into that and actually the National Party is very proud of what it accomplished in Government. It's just a shame—it's just a shame—that what could have been a good vehicle for further reform and further rehabilitation efforts were lost by this deficient piece of legislation."