Adams Amy: Urgent Debates — Serco—Decision to End Contract for Mt Eden Corrections FacilityText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeAdams Amy: Urgent Debates — Serco—Decision to End Contract for Mt Eden Corrections Facility[Sitting date: 09 December 2015. Volume:710;Page:8708. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon AMY ADAMS (Minister of Justice): I am very pleased to come and take a call in this afternoon’s urgent debate on the decision of the chief executive of the Department of Corrections to not renew the contract with Serco for the management of the Mt Eden Corrections Facility. I just want to start my contribution this afternoon by first of all taking the opportunity to commend my colleague the Hon Peseta Sam Lotu-Iiga. I think Sam has done an excellent job in his time in the portfolio over an incredibly difficult period faced with some very real issues that most members in this House would find challenging. Sam has kept a level calm approach to it and has every single day put what is best for the prisoners and the system at the forefront of his decision making. I know that Sam has thoroughly enjoyed his time in the corrections portfolio. I know that he will go on to be a strong and effective Minister of Local Government.I do think it is worth reflecting though on the fact that we are talking here about some of the most dangerous environments in New Zealand. We are talking about the most dangerous people who are confined against their will in prisons where frankly bad things have always happened and will always happen. Corrections staff whether in private or public prisons actually go in every day and face situations that I would be surprised if anyone in this House has had to face. They do incredibly well. But if we are going to judge the success of the prison service by whether there are zero incidents then frankly we are living in la-la land. These are very dangerous people. In fact I can tell you that the crime statistics tell us that over recent years what we have seen is a hardening almost of the people in the prisons as we have worked very hard to get low-level offenders out of the prison system and into community-based sentences. What you are left with in prison frankly are the most serious people serving longer sentences for serious crimes. They are dangerous and violent. These debates have to be had in that context. Actually when reviews are done into the system that point is made clear.The work done in prisons is very very good. It is of a very high standard. Where incidents do happen of course they have to be looked at and considered and reported on. The Minister has done absolutely the right thing in seeking assurances about the various issues that have come up. But the fact remains that we cannot magic ourselves into thinking that these are preschools and tea parties. They are not. They are dangerous places and incidents do occur.I have to kind of just comment for a moment on that sort of slightly xenophobic rant from the New Zealand First member Mahesh Bindra who was saying that it is all about the fact that they are foreigners. Frankly that is a load of rot. We have never taken a view of saying only New Zealanders can do anything well. Our approach has always been asking what will provide the most efficient and effective service for prisoners in New Zealand and therefore for the wider public. It is about making sure that the public is safe and that when people are in prisons they have the best chance of returning to productive lives. Frankly if New Zealand First is going to take an approach of saying that anyone who is a foreigner should just go home that is something that it can take to the polls. I do not think that that is what New Zealanders would want.Let me talk about the contract that has been the subject of this debate. This contract was signed in 2011 with a well-renowned international firm that is a specialist in this area and that is also working with us at the Auckland South Corrections Facility and doing very well. At the time the contract was put together Mt Eden prison was a very different place. It was a very different place. At the time the facility had predominantly sentenced prisoners with a small number of remandees in the facility. What has happened over time is that the operational reality of that prison has changed considerably to the point where it is now almost entirely remand prisoners. For anyone who is not involved in the sector why does that matter? It is because with remand prisoners you have people in prison who are there for very short periods of time they are not adapted to the prison system they are at their most angry and often their most violent and often they are going through withdrawal symptoms. There is not the time to put them through treatment programmes and recidivism reduction programmes. Anyone who knows the sector will tell you that remand prisoners are the most difficult to manage for those reasons.Of course we have to deal with remand prisoners and Mt Eden has become our primary remand facility certainly in the North Island. But what that has meant is that the contract that was written in 2011 for what was fundamentally a sentenced prison facility now that we look at it in 2015 and what is likely to be needed in Mt Eden over the next 4 years we know that actually we would want the contract framed differently. Actually at the time the contract was written the department had the foresight to know that although the contract provided for up to 10 years in actual fact we might need to change how the system worked so this break point was provided for exactly this reason—so we could sit here in 2015 and ask “Actually is Mt Eden prison still operating the way it was in 2011?”. If not there is an opportunity to stop that contract come out rethink how it works and take it back out for another solution. That is exactly what the chief executive today has determined. I think it is absolutely the right decision. I think it is a decision frankly that would have been highly likely to have happened regardless of the issues we have seen around fight clubs and the like in some of the allegations because the nature of this prison has changed. The whole reason for having a term like this in contracts is so you can say “Now that the prison is a different beast let’s write the contract for those terms.” That is exactly what is happening.I just want to make one closing comment because a lot of the debate has been on some sort of vilification of any sort of private involvement in prisons. Actually I absolutely support the concept of public-private partnerships in our prisons. I think it is a very good concept. The interesting thing is that assaults fights criminal behaviour happen in every prison in our system—in every prison in our system. There was a serious assault at Rimutaka Prison just the other day. What is the difference with a private prison? With a private prison we can hold them to account terminate the contract and give them financial penalties. There is better accountability in a privately run prison than in any other prison in the system. Actually that is a good thing. It means that now when there is a serious issue there is someone to hold to account. If they are not delivering they can be moved on. That is working through its way with the chief inspector’s report. Those decisions are for the chief inspector to comment on.But this issue of accountability is one that applies right across the prison estate and for the first time because of this Government because of this private provider system we have the ability to hold them to account which today the chief executive is doing which is the right thing. It shows us that the system does provide for greater accountability does provide for opportunities to change if things are not working and allows us to renegotiate the terms when the system of the prison changes. I can understand that these are issues of serious interest to the public as they must be. But these are dangerous places. They are dangerous right across the system. Mt Eden Corrections Facility is no different from any other prison in that regard. But with the foresight of the contract drafters in 2011 they have done exactly what we needed them to do which is provide us with an opportunity at this point to assess whether it was still what we needed going forward for this prison. It is not so the contract has been ended. I think it is absolutely the right decision.