Power Simon: Questions for Oral Answer — Questions to Ministers 
Power Simon: Questions for Oral Answer — Questions to Ministers 
[Volume:649;Page:17680] 
6.  
SIMON POWER (National—Rangitikei) 
 to the  
Minister of Corrections 
: Does he have confidence in his department; if so why? 
Hon PHIL GOFF (Minister of Corrections) 
: 
 Yes; because of the significant improvements that have occurred in the Department of Corrections compared with what occurred 10 years ago when National was in Government. The escape rate has fallen by 84 percent positive random drugs tests have fallen from 34 percent in 1998 to 14 percent last year serious assaults on staff are down by 90 percent and much more is being done in terms of providing employment training and dealing with drug and alcohol addiction in order to assist inmate rehabilitation. 
Simon Power 
: What does he say to the victims of convicted murderer Antonie Dixon given that he has been able to post entries and photos on to a website from behind bars including comments about attacking two women with a samurai sword and photos of his “Gangster Killer Club” tattoo; and is the partner of Dixon’s victim not right to conclude that for a murderer behind bars Dixon is still able to get exactly what he wants? 
Hon PHIL GOFF 
: No absolutely not. The very fact that he is behind bars means that he is removed from being a threat to public safety. Let me pick up on the member’s point about the photographs on the Internet. They were not posted from within the prison because prisoners do not have access to the Internet as the member knows. However it is my understanding that the photographs were taken within the prison probably by a cellphone. The member is well aware of course that this Government has made huge advances in preventing the use of cellphone technology within prisons and in preventing the entry of contraband into prisons. In fact this Government’s record as I think even the member would acknowledge is far better than the record of the Government he was part of in the 1990s which failed on all of those fronts. 
Hon David Benson-Pope 
: Can the Minister give us more detail of the progress that has been made in cellphone blocking and the monitoring of prisoner telephone calls from pay phones? 
Hon PHIL GOFF 
: There has been excellent progress. In fact I was at the corrections Ministers conference in Australia a couple of weeks ago and I found the Australians were very keen to be briefed by New Zealand on its progress because they said they have not been able to make any progress in this regard and they thought New Zealand was the most advanced corrections jurisdiction anywhere in the world. We now have in place three prisons where cellphones cannot be used because of jamming technology. We have the other prisons where jamming technology will be rolled out by February of next year. That puts New Zealand ahead of any other Western country in terms of cellphone jamming. 
Simon Power 
: Does he agree with the statement made by the Prime Minister 2 years ago when an inmate was found to be writing letters and getting someone to post them on a weblog: “It used to be that when you were put away you were put away from society.”; and what has changed from the prison system that the Prime Minister described to the one that he runs which seems to allow inmates to get information on to the Internet for social networking? 
Hon PHIL GOFF 
: What have changed are all of the things that I set out in my primary answer to that member. When people are put away from society and jailed in a prison now instead of about 80 prisoners a year escaping that number has fallen to one-sixth of that level. What has changed is that instead of contraband once being so easily able to be smuggled into the prison that system has been tightened up with a change to a single point of entry the use of drug dogs and so on. A whole lot of positive things have been done since that member was in Government when the Department of Corrections was so bad that the National Party’s only answer was to privatise it in the hope that the private sector would do better all the while running down the public sector so that it performed very badly. The department has improved vastly since then. 
Simon Power 
: Does he agree with this statement: “The point I am making is that it does not matter a damn whether one has private or public prisons in that sense. What really matters is the way in which those prisons are operated.”—a statement he made in this House on 9 November 1994? 
Hon PHIL GOFF 
: As it happens in preparation for a discussion earlier in the day with the member I went back and read all of those speeches. What I am saying today in opposition to the privatisation of prisons is exactly the same as what I was saying 14 years ago when the member was still at school as I recall. 
Simon Power 
: Can he confirm that some of the country’s worst offenders are planning to sue his department for distress and humiliation because it lost a file containing their details in the street; and what about the distress and humiliation experienced by victims when over $35000 has been paid out in compensation to inmates so far with over $4 million in claims to be adjudicated under the law that he said would stop such claims? 
Hon PHIL GOFF 
: Before that law was put in place—the Prisoners’ and Victims’ Claims Act—prisoners did sue routinely and the money was not able to be recovered from them at all. I think the biggest payments were made as a result of the behaviour management regime that was put in place when Nick Smith was Minister of Corrections. The Act states that any money that is payable first goes in terms of outstanding fines and reparations secondly goes in terms of the cost of any legal services provided and thirdly goes to victims if they claim for it. 
Simon Power 
: What does it say about his department that the first it heard of Dixon’s MySpace page was when it was approached by the media and the first it knew about losing a file on the street containing details of serious offenders was when it was approached by the media? 
Hon PHIL GOFF 
: What it says in terms of the information on the website is that Department of Corrections staff do not sit around all day doing nothing but following the Net.