Nash StuartSTUART NASH (Labour—Napier): Actually Mr Assistant Speaker I would rather you give me 5 minutes. This is a subject that is not nearly as inspirational or as aspirational as the last one—in fact there is no doubt about that. I remember when I got up to speak on this one. I was watching the second hand tick and I am sure it got to 12 when I had to jump up and I got 20 seconds. I got 20 seconds.What I was talking about was that this bill came out of a series of systems failures that allowed Phillip John Smith who is one of the more despicable people in our jails—he is a paedophile and then when he went back to abuse the kid again this kid's father tried to shield him and Smith murdered this guy's father. Like I said he is one of the more despicable men I have ever read about in our country. But he managed to get away. Luckily for us he is as thick as two short planks. The reason I say that is he actually got across to South America but then they caught him pretty quickly and they sent him back here. It is good that they did catch him and it is good that they did send him back here. However a little wee part of me wishes he had just spent a couple of years in a South American jail. But anyway that is a story for another day.This bill is about a whole lot of recommendations that came out of the report that was written based on Phillip John Smith's escape. It is a shame I must admit that it took an incident like that to provide the impetus for us to do this because there were obvious system flaws before Phillip John Smith escaped or else he would not have been able to escape. But often it is the way with this Government that it is very reactive. If a situation happens then it says Goodness me this has captured the public imagination." it does a poll and it realises it needs to do something about it. But here we are. This bill is going to make the system a better one of that there is no doubt.The report that was written about Phillip John Smith's escape did detail a series of failures in the handling of the incident by Corrections by Justice by Customs and by Internal Affairs. Because a man escaped it was not just the fault of Customs. You have got to remember that this guy ended up getting a passport for goodness' sake—obviously with a photo with a whole lot of hair because he wears a wig—but Corrections it was noted had strong inadequacies in the way it administered temporary releases. I can imagine actually that when Phillip John Smith ended up back in prison there were some other prisoners who were not terribly happy because Corrections actually changed the rules and that meant that—what is the technical term for shore leave or leave outside the wire? You know what I am trying to say.Mahesh Bindra: Release to Work.STUART NASH: Release to Work. Yes those schemes—Corrections put a ban on those immediately and then it tightened up on those. Release to Work schemes are a good idea I must admit. We need to end up with a way that better reintegrates people back into the community.One thing I am very very critical of is our—well not just Corrections but our whole society is. In 2005 the Corrections budget was around about $526 million. This was its operational budget. It is now close to $1.4 billion so after 12 years we are now spending about $900 million more a year keeping people locked up. There has at some point been some sort of systemic failure and I do think we lock too many people up. But that is beside the point. What we do need to ensure is—our jails of course have to be places of incarceration but they also need to be places of rehabilitation. The evidence points to the fact that it is actually not happening in a way that is allowing prisoners to get out and at least have a chance of being productive.I remember when we had the CEO of Corrections at our Law and Order Committee. He told us that actually 62 percent of prisoners who walk through the prison door every single year have an existing mental health and/or addiction issue and there are 14000 Kiwis who are in jail for 6 months or longer every year. That is about 8500 people in prison for 6 months or longer who have a mental health and/or addiction issue. I said to the CEO: "So have you at least got the plans and the processes in place so that when these people get out of jail they have at least got a chance of being productive members of society?". Do you know what he said—and I would not have believed it. I have got the transcript. He said: "I don't think we're that ambitious." "I don't think we're that ambitious"—that is an admission that what we are doing in this country is locking up people and throwing away the key. When we find the key 6 months 12 months or 18 months later we are letting them go and they are a little bit badder and they are a little bit sadder and we wonder why in 6 months' time we see them back in jail. In fact we have one of the highest recidivism rates in the OECD and it is something that we have got to change.It is not necessarily Corrections' fault. It is not the one that is locking people up for longer and longer but it is the one responsible for administering that. What I would really like to see is us getting back to a different way of administering justice. What has happened is we have become a much more punitive society as opposed to the compassionate society that we once were. We are now saying that the solution is to lock 'em up as opposed to saying that the solution is to find what will work or to understand the issues of why people are ending up in the criminal justice system. Compassion versus punitive—I think we need to go back to compassion. When you think would you believe that it costs us $100000 a year to keep one man in jail I just wonder whether we would not be better spending that money elsewhere in solutions as opposed to locking people up. But back to the bill. [Interruption] Thank you Mr Assistant Speaker for allowing me to stand on my soapbox for 5 minutes about Corrections.Police did also note in the report they wrote about the Phillip John Smith incident that they did not have access to basic information such as births deaths and marriages records which would assist them in building essential profiles around offenders. The reason I say that is that members will have noticed that sometimes when someone is arrested or the police are looking for someone they will say: "John Jones sometimes known as Bob Brown or sometimes known as Jim Smith." The prosecution works in that the name that the prisoner or the person being prosecuted or arrested carries at that point in time is the name that goes forward into the system. So if the name that the person is being arrested under or prosecuted under is Jim Jones but he was born with the name of John Smith then that information is not captured and I think this is what Phillip John Smith used to get his passport.In this day and age in the 21st century of big data and these massive databases when IRD is spending $1.3 billion and every other man and his dog or every other ministry is spending literally millions and millions what we do expect I think and what the voters certainly expect and what New Zealanders expect is that we put the systems in place that allow our databases to at least talk to each other in a meaningful way that is going to keep our communities safe. The reason I mention that is that Phillip John Smith went over to I think Argentina. He went overseas. OK what would have happened if he had actually gone to Hawke's Bay or New Plymouth or somewhere else and continued in his nefarious ways or if he had decided to go for the guys who put him in jail? He did murder the father of the son he had abused. What if he had gone and sought revenge? In a way we were lucky he did not do that. In a way we were lucky he did head overseas. All I am saying is that what the scam did was it exposed a whole lot of flaws which this bill will actually remedy I am sure.There were 30 recommendations that were made by the inquiry. The Minister of Justice Amy Adams had at the time of the report's release agreed to 34—sorry did I say 30? There were 39 recommendations; she agreed to 34 of them. What I would say is that the Minister was actually very serious. She took on board a lot of the recommendations because she understood the fact that this is important as do we. It is why we are supporting the bill.My good colleague Kelvin Davis at the time of the report's release said that it painted a pretty farcical scenario of how a complete lack of information across Government agencies allowed Smith to apply for and receive a passport in a name he had not used since he was a child. Kelvin also noted that it highlighted deficiencies in identity information. Kelvin just went on—The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): Order!STUART NASH: —in the very competent way that he did to say that things needed to change.It is why we are supporting this bill. It will be good to see it go through because the last thing we want is another Phillip John Smith in our communities. Like I said we are lucky that he was as thick as two short planks and that we caught him pretty quickly and got him back in jail and may he be there for the rest of his life but may that also be the last time someone uses such a scam to escape. On that note I will just say that we do support this bill. Thank you very much."