Mark Ron: General Debates 
Mark Ron: General Debates 
[Volume:616;Page:11927] 
RON MARK (NZ First) 
: 
 I rise today to speak on the Department of Corrections once again. I have to ask: how long will it take? When will this Minister get it? When will he understand that his department is out of control and needs a thorough going-over from top to bottom? When will the Minister take a calm quiet look at the debacle now unfolding with the scenario at Waikato’s prison which has been so carefully dissected by Rodney Hide? When will he look at the exorbitant budget blowout at the prison at Ngawha or at the appalling antics of the emergency response unit and the shonky in-house cover-up that went on for years which a series of incompetent Ministers failed to see through? 
Looking at the Corrections Bill and hearing about the Department of Corrections’ much-vaunted integrated offender management system we once again see examples of more shonky advice. We are increasingly hearing allegations of corruption and the wasting of public money. In this case I believe that the advice given to the Minister to essentially incorporate the integrated offender management system into clauses 49 to 51 of the legislation is going to expose the Crown and the taxpaying public to legal action by offenders who are released from prison and who then unfortunately because they were not given an integrated offender management plan and were not rehabilitated found themselves in the unfortunate position of reoffending. The world’s heart will go out to them—yeah right. 
Regretfully unless this Minister gets a hold on his department and pulls garbage like this out of his bill we will see victims of crimes that are committed by offenders whose integrated offender management plan failed them suing the Government as well. This Minister had better get off his horse and have a look at what is down the back end of it because there is a pile of it there. Everybody in the country can see what is going on inside the Department of Corrections but he does nothing. His name will go alongside other Ministers before him who likewise did nothing such as Mark Gosche Margaret Wilson Matt Robson and Paul East. All these Ministers sat with their hands over their eyes and gave answers to members in this House that everything was OK in the Department of Corrections. It is not it was not and if he does not do something about it the payer will again be the taxpayer. 
This Minister needs to know that the evidence and information that I have increasingly says that the integrated offender management system has not been implemented and that the figures and facts the Minister is receiving are not actual. There are prisoners being released today who never had an integrated offender management plan prepared for them and in the case of one man who bashed an immigrant to death in Latimer Square and who has just been released from jail who never had a Straight Thinking course or a course to deal with his anger management. 
The danger is that when people like this get back out on the street and reoffend who will they blame? Under the legislation it is the responsibility of the Department of Corrections to put in place corrective plans to help them overcome their problems. The problem with that is this little weasely clause that says “resources providing”. The resources will never be always available and it clearly opens up the litigious path. 
I have tabled in the House today an opinion from Chapman Tripp and it clearly signals that there is a problem. The question I ask the Minister is when will he start taking sane sensible advice analysing what we in the Opposition are saying and accepting it and stop listening to some of those people in his own department who gave us the debacle at Ngawha and at Waikato? There is good advice tabled in the House for him and I am signalling here today that New Zealand First will be watching this integrated offender management system. The lottery-number figures that I am hearing for its implementation should be a serious cause for concern to the Minister. It is to me. He need only speak to his union members around this country who are card-carrying members of the Labour Party—good competent prison officers—and hear what they have to say. It is there. He should listen and take some action.