Ardern Shane: Corrections Amendment Bill (No 2) — Third Reading 
Ardern Shane: Corrections Amendment Bill (No 2) — Third Reading 
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SHANE ARDERN (National—Taranaki - King Country) 
: 
 It was a good decision to call that member. Listening to the former Minister Clayton Cosgrove speak one would think he was speaking in opposition to the bill. In fact I thought that maybe the Labour members had done a U-turn halfway through the discussions today and come up with a decision that they were no longer going to support a bill that as the former Minister said was drafted by the previous Government and has been modified—I guess we could say—and brought into Parliament by the current new Government. 
Listening to the member I was a bit perplexed as to where he was heading but the reality is this legislation is something that should have been done at least 8 years ago. It has been in the pipeline for so long that it is a wonder that it did not disappear like a lot of other legislation on the Order Paper such as the trout amendment bill and various other bits and pieces that hung around there—I think they have been there for successive Governments. 
Hon Steve Chadwick 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. I want to clarify that it was not Labour that removed that legislation from the Order Paper; it was National. 
Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER 
: That is not a point of order. 
SHANE ARDERN 
: I not sure how to respond to that. It is not often that I end up in a situation where I am not sure how to respond to a member like that. The reality is that the bill has been in the pipeline for a long long time; it is well overdue. It does a number of things and perhaps it is time we started to talk about some of the things that the bill does. 
One of the things the bill does is to make it much more difficult now for criminals inside prison to communicate with the outside world particularly when that communication is not in the best interests of justice. In fact in a lot of cases communication was taking place to further enhance prisoners’ criminal activity both inside the prison and outside. That is one of the things the bill deals with. As the Minister of Corrections said in her speech it does so by using modern technology that hopefully will not interfere with legitimate telecommunications activity outside the prison. I know that that technology has advanced substantially in recent times. We will have to wait and see but we are assured that that is the case. 
The legislation also brings about a situation where finally when people go into prison they will have to adhere to what the jury and judge dished out in regard to the punishment they were supposed to receive what they are allowed to take in and out of the prison what they are allowed to do within the prison itself and how they are allowed to carry out their legitimate business. It should also bring an end to the kind of—I guess one could say—covert activity that has gone on over the years within our prisons in regard to dealing in drugs and other illicit activity. 
It always astounds people when they find out that a criminal for whatever reason has been able to carry out some kind of commercial or drug-dealing activity when supposedly in jail. Hopefully this bill will send a message to those people and give the Department of Corrections the opportunity to do something about that in a way that it has never had before. Those are very positive outcomes. A number of different anecdotal statements have come back to us as members of Parliament about the kind of activity that some prisoners are engaged in: intimidating witnesses writing coded letters to supposedly their personal friends or loved ones and suchlike. Hopefully the Corrections Amendment Bill (No 2) will help to bring about changes to some of that behaviour. 
I was interested that the previous speaker went on about the fact that some of his criticism had been interpreted as a personal attack on the Minister. I know that the Minister will take any type of personal attack that that member wants to dish out. It certainly will not have any effect on her response to the way our laws are drafted. So if the member thought he could in some way intimidate the Minister with that bluster then I suspect he is mistaken in his judgment. I also suspect that if anything his approach will help this side of the House have some clarity about the fact that this bill is overdue. It should have been done by the previous Government. The legislation has been necessary for a long time. It will bring about changes that most decent people will say are the right changes and potentially will help us have better control over what happens in our prisons. Thank you Mr Deputy Speaker.