Alexander Marc: Estimates Debate — In Committee Procedure 
Alexander Marc: Estimates Debate — In Committee Procedure 
[Volume:618;Page:14426] 
MARC ALEXANDER (United Future) 
: 
 There are three areas in the estimates for corrections that I would like to concentrate on: prison construction home detention and the integrated offender management system and I will try to get through the lot if time allows. We are to have four new prisons: Ngawha opening in 2005 Auckland Region Women’s Corrections Facility opening in 2006 South Auckland Men’s Corrections Facility at Spring Hill opening in 2007 and Otago Region Corrections Facility opening in 2007. We are talking here about over half a billion dollars a year being spent on running the Department of Corrections. The total cost of the projects I have just mentioned has ballooned to $624 million. That is an abject lesson that no Government project should ever be pursued without adequate tendering—and I do not believe that has been done—without front-end cost appraisals without true accountability and without due respect being given to the taxpayers who are forced to pay for it. When we look at how prisons are being built and run we see that it is nothing more than a sop to the unions and a sop to Labour Party ideology—and I will get on to that a little later. 
The facts are firstly that the estimated costs were not set for the projects. Secondly they were inadequately tendered having incremental decisions made all the way through the different stages of each project. If that were done in private enterprise the plug would have been pulled a long time ago. The shareholders in private enterprise would have complained. In this case the shareholders are the public of New Zealand and they should complain. Thirdly no consideration was given to viable alternatives in providing the safety and security that is rightly demanded and expected by innocent and law-abiding taxpayers. For example why should there not be double-bunking? Why should prisoners be kept in conditions that are better than those of many of our aged citizens and some of our more at-risk families? Also we could increase the muster capacity of our current prisons by adding extra wings rather than necessarily having to build new expensive facilities to house criminals. Again why on earth did we not have private management such as has been done in the case of Auckland Central Remand Prison tendered out? 
Brian Connell 
: Union payback time. 
MARC ALEXANDER 
: That is exactly right; it is a sop to the union. When privately managed prisons run effectively they can do so with the public interest and the public purse at heart. The Auckland Central Remand Prison saves taxpayers $27000 per inmate per year yet this Minister and this Government have decided to get rid of the one bright spark in our Department of Corrections. Why? Because it embarrasses the hell out of the Minister’s department and because it upsets and embarrasses the union responsible for the State-managed prisons. 
If we look at the situation regarding home detention we find the hopeless cost-reducing ideological mess that is this Government’s home-detention policy and it can be nothing else. It has not reduced reoffending it puts the public at risk it is difficult to monitor it is not cost effective and it is administered contrary to the expectations of the public and their interests in the justice system of this country. United Future does however congratulate the Minister on his signal that he will have a review. We look forward to its conclusions and trust that it will not be another socialist whitewash of the existing failed policy. 
Brian Connell 
: What about the “goon squad”? 
MARC ALEXANDER 
: I am waiting for that with bated breath along with everyone else. 
 I question the validity of the integrated offender management system which is the greatest con job perpetrated by the Department of Corrections. We asked for the empirical basis upon which that system was being pursued as our prisoner management model. We received nothing. We asked for the benchmarks upon which its success or failure would be determined. We received nothing. We asked for information about when and how its efficacy would to be determined rather than having a swarm of partial reviews committee assessments and apologetic kowtowing to technical issues about the questionable reliability of the rehabilitation quotient. We received nothing. That system is nothing more than ideology masked as common sense and it does not do that very well at all. In fact it does the reverse of that. We were told that there were factors that would affect the success of the integrated offender management system such as the personal decisions made by the offender the ability to lead a non-offending lifestyle and so on.