Andersen GinnyGINNY ANDERSEN (Labour): Thank you Madam Chair. It's a great privilege to be able to rebut some of those outrageous assertions made by members on the other side of the Chamber—absolutely outrageous assertions. Let's talk about some facts tonight. Let's talk about some facts. Let's have a look at what we've heard at the Justice Committee and in particular if we're concerned about numbers and the way they're tracking let's look at what the plan is from this Government. If there are concerns from the members opposite that there is not one I'd like to remind them of a few things that are going on and those things have taken a long time indeed to materialise. It's very quick to be criticising what hasn't happened in a few months when those opposite have sat on their hands for year after year and watched the numbers go in the wrong direction with an absolutely hands-off response and an ability to call out Lock 'em up!" without any other underlying response to the root of the problem and that's actually why we're here tonight. So let's take a look at what the Department of Corrections' annual report gave back to the Justice Committee. One of the first things we saw was that it was the first time we've started to see—started to see—a decline in the prison numbers in New Zealand and that's where we want to keep that tracking. We want to see that reduction of 30 percent over 15 years and how are we going to do that? The first thing we really need to look at is the rate of Māori reoffending and try to address that. That's exactly what this Government has done and the previous one made no real attempt to address it. So Māori are four times more likely to be arrested Pākehā are far more likely to get warnings and diversion than Māori Māori are five times more likely to be charged by a police officer they are five times more likely to be convicted and caught and they are eight times—eight times—more likely to go to prison than somebody who is Pākehā. So what is this Government doing about that? You will have seen as part of this Wellbeing Budget an announcement in the past couple of days one that looks directly at a Māori pathway that is whānau-centred and Whānau Ora - driven and that is a new approach. That is a new approach and a structural change to the way this system has previously worked. So instead of operating on the same basis of enabling recidivism and enabling Māori to be incarcerated time after time again this is a Government that's taking action to try and turn around those areas—and how is that being done? That is being done by jointly funding agencies so that we can have agencies working together for a collective response and that's exactly what we've got going on.This is an initiative: the basis of our Māori reoffending rate being targeted by co-designing and implementing it with Māori corrections Te Puni Kōkiri and the Ministry of Social Development working together with hapū and iwi to make sure that we have supported and understood those issues that are going on to make this problem no longer a significant one for New Zealand and that's exactly what's happening. The unique thing about this—the unique thing about having a whānau-centred pathway to break the cycle of Māori reoffending—is it uses the Wellbeing Budget structure and the wellbeings to jointly fund agencies so that they're working together and this is the difference—this is the differenceI would like to use the example of the Gang Intelligence Centre set up under the previous Government which set up eight different agencies but didn't fund them together didn't enable them to work together and set them up to have to find that money out of their own departments which meant non-committal which meant no ability to collectively work and share information and which meant an initiative that was set up from the beginning to not deliver. So that is the change that the members opposite are asking for.That is the difference with a wellbeing Budget that goes further than looking at just trying to get the books in the black. It goes to the heart of where problems are and tries to address those by using whānau by using the connections on the ground and by caring about people—and that's where it's different: by caring about trying to address those issues and trying to put people first in a way. That is why there is a real difference between the direction that we've been going in the past and the new direction that this Government takes because we are committed to turning around that reoffending rate and we are committed to reducing the prison population by 30 percent in 15 years. You can get hung up on targets but we're here where it matters—and that is people. Thank you Madam Chair."