Goff Phil: Corrections Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Goff Phil: Corrections Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
[Sitting date: 26 February 2013. Volume:687;Page:8187. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Hon PHIL GOFF (Labour—Mt Roskill) 
: 
 The Labour Opposition worked constructively on the Corrections Amendment Bill before the Law and Order Committee but for three predominant reasons we will be opposing this bill. The first and the most important reason is that this bill further entrenches the ideological view of the National Party that the deprivation of liberty of a person properly for having seriously offended against the law should be the subject of a profit motive and should be run by the private sector as a commercial undertaking. Labour is fundamentally opposed to that ideological view of the National Party. Yes we believe that prisons need to be run efficiently and cost-effectively but no evidence—no evidence—was adduced to show that privatisation of prisons would achieve that particular outcome. 
What this bill does is pass from the Chief Executive of the Department of Corrections a public servant certain powers that will be delegated to private sector contractors such as the security classification of an inmate and the temporary release of an inmate. Our view is that those are functions that are properly carried out by the Public Service not by a private contractor whose principal motivation in running the business will be to maximise profit. When you are focused on maximising profit you cut corners and you cut corners most often by reducing staff. The evidence is very clearly there in private contracted prisons that they have cut staff and the inmate-staff ratios have increased to the detriment of public safety and to the detriment of the proper running of those prisons. I want to come back in a moment in a little more detail to the contract management of prisons and why we are against it. 
The second reason that we are against this bill is that it puts in a provision relating to strip-searching of inmates that requires that the most intrusive the most intimate form of strip-searching applies across the board. At the moment there are two types of strip-searching. I understand that in a prison where contraband can be smuggled into the prison at risk to the inmate at risk to the staff and at risk to the way in which that institution is run on occasions you do need strip-searching. But at the moment there is a routine strip-search where the inmate is simply required to squat undressed so that something that may be concealed internally will come out if it is not deeply concealed. The other more intimate form of strip-searching actually involves the use of lights and mirrors to illuminate the genital and the anal areas of the inmate. That is deeply intrusive. It is deeply unpleasant both for the inmate and for the prison officer. If this form of strip-searching was required in every case then you would think that the group that would benefit most from that the prison officers would be in favour of it. Were they in favour? No they were absolutely opposed to this. They said: “This is not necessary this is not the right way to do it and this is going to make our staff members more liable to assault by inmates.” 
We have a clear problem and a clear trend in prisons at the moment of increasing levels of assault. We owe it to the people who have to work in those rather toxic environments to listen to what they are saying to us. They were saying to us: “Don’t do it this way. This is the wrong way to go.” It was not just prison officers who said that this is the wrong way to go; it was the Ombudsman. One of the representatives of the Office of the Ombudsmen is a former inspector of prisons who said that this provision is liable to abuse and gave examples of how strip-searching had been abused in certain cases such as at the Mangaroa Prison now the Hawke’s Bay Regional Prison in order specifically to humiliate and to take advantage of prisoners. You have to listen to what the Office of the Ombudsmen says because it is set up as the watchdog to advise Parliament as to the right way and the wrong way of going about things. The Law Society made the same point. 
All of those groups would be able to draw on the fact that there is not even an increasing problem of smuggling contraband into prisons that might justify examining this approach. To the contrary when Labour assumed office in 1999 the rate of positive testing of inmates for drugs was a whopping 36 percent. Over a third of the inmates were managing to get drugs in prison. Apparently in those days it was easier to get drugs in prison than outside. We tightened up the rules governing searching and the security of prisons we invested in more secure prisons and that rate was reduced. Today I think it is at about 5 percent—from 36 percent of prisoners using drugs down to 5 percent. That actually suggests that what was being done was working and that what is being proposed here is not necessary. 
I specifically asked the manager of the Rimutaka Prison—one of our biggest prisons in this country—whether the more intimate sort of strip-searching would be a good way of stopping contraband from coming in. His answer was frank. He said: “If you internally conceal the contraband you’re trying to get in this will not work.” Prison officers said to us: “If you really have good grounds to suspect that somebody is smuggling—it might be a weapon or it might be drugs or it might be something else—then you put them in a dry cell nature will take its course and whatever is concealed internally will emerge.” That is the way to do it not what is proposed here. What I cannot understand is why the Minister of Corrections when presented with this evidence by groups like prison officers the Office of the Ombudsmen and the New Zealand Law Society ignored those submissions. Why were they ignored? We have never had an explanation from the Minister. 
The third thing about this bill that concerns me is Supplementary Order Paper 171 in relation to smoking in prisons which was brought in at the eleventh hour. The Labour Party and I for one are in favour of prisons being smoke-free but we have in this country a constitutional provision. If you want to change the rules in areas like this you bring the change in the form of a bill to the House the House takes it to a select committee we hear submissions we get expert advice we iron out the wrinkles in it we get it right and constitutionally we pass the change in rules. Is that what Judith Collins did? Absolutely not. Like Henry VIII she said by decree: “There will be no smoking in prisons.” She was warned that she did not have the constitutional authority to do that but such is the arrogance of that Minister the former Minister of Corrections that she ignored the advice. And what do we get? We get a notorious prisoner in Auckland prison taking a case to court and defeating this Government—a prisoner defeating this Government—because he was able to work out that the Government had not done it right. 
Andrew Little 
: Back in court next week. 
Hon PHIL GOFF 
: Yes “Back in court next week.” my colleague said and that may well be the case. Why may that be the case? Because this was brought directly to the House without the opportunity for the select committee to examine it without us as parliamentarians being able to ask the Ministry of Justice the searching questions to see whether it had got it right and without the opportunity for submitters from the public and expert submitters to come to the select committee and say: “Yes finally the Government has got it right.” But no the Government rushes it in. It brings it in without notice and without discussion at the select committee and the chances are that it will get it wrong again. 
I just want to say this finally going back to the question of the privatisation of prisons. Serco is the private contractor given the job of running Mt Eden prison and the planned Wiri Prison. It went to the London Stock Exchange on 11 September of last year to boast that it would make $30 million a year out of running Wiri Prison—$30 million. So that is $30 million from the New Zealand taxpayer that will go out of this country to line the pockets of the private investors in Serco. Does Serco have a track record of running these things well? Not in Australia not in the UK and not here in Mount Eden. In the first year of running that prison it released three inmates who should not have been released it kept in another three inmates who should properly have been released and it allowed one to escape. It failed to meet 19 out of 37 performance standards that were set down for it. It is not efficient it is not cost-effective and the profit motive is wrong.