Harawira Hone: Urgent Debates — Corrections Department—Ombudsmen’s Report 
Harawira Hone: Urgent Debates — Corrections Department—Ombudsmen’s Report 
[Volume:639;Page:9831] 
HONE HARAWIRA (Maori Party—Te Tai Tokerau) 
: 
 Kia ora Madam Assistant Speaker. Kia ora tatou te Whare. Three years ago an 11-year-old indigenous boy was arrested for burglary held in custody overnight and then transported 500 kilometres in a police cage. The cops told his mum that they would not let him sit in the empty back seat but that he would be comfortable lying on the floor of the “dog box”. Even though tribal leaders elders and civil rights lawyers condemned the action the Minister of Police said the officers had followed all protocols.  
This is one of the many true stories that came out of the  
Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody 
 and although it is about our Koori relations in Australia it could just as easily have come out of the Belgrave-Smith investigation into the transportation of prisoners here in Aotearoa. Just like here the ever-increasing imprisonment of indigenous people is reflected in Canada Australia Hawaii Tahiti and other places where colonial ethics still dominate. And folks it is not a good-news story. 
The 2003  
Census of Prison Inmates and Home Detainees 
 stated that 60 percent of female inmates and nearly 55 percent of male inmates on remand were Maori. That means there is a better than even chance that prisoners in transit will be Maori as well. So when the Ombudsmen talk about the inhumane treatment of prisoners in transit that means overwhelmingly Maori. I quote his concluding comments: “… needs are not being met. There is a lack of national standards for food water and rest breaks. Some practices fall significantly short of meeting what we would consider reasonable standards.” 
I had included this next comment in my speech notes and then thought: “Nah things must have changed.” But I had written down that prisoners were urinating in the vans and not being fed because the escorts could not be bothered stopping and that prisoners were being moved in the evening because there were not enough beds in prison. However the reality is way scarier than the report lets on. I was going to take that comment out because that is the way it was the last time I was in a police truck back in about 1983. So it is not just about chucking rocks at Damien O’Connor; nothing has changed at all. In fact it has become worse. 
The previous speaker Nandor Tanczos said there is no way of knowing what is going on in the back of the truck yet way back in the mid-1980s they had all of us sitting in one cage and in another cage—before they had the cab with the truck—they had another officer sitting in there. So they knew all of the time what was going on. It seems things have gone backwards in the last 20 years. I do not know where but I am not surprised I have to say. 
Not only are the basic needs not being met but also the report states: “Hard wood or metal benches for journeys of many hours in small cages without proper windows does not constitute a humane standard of transport.” We do not expect inmates to get the celebrity treatment that Paris Hilton is getting but we do expect that their basic human rights will be met. 
We do expect the Department of Corrections to ensure that custodial sentences “are administered in a safe secure humane and effective manner” in line with its legislation. That was the standard in section C.O1 of the  
Policy and Procedures Manual 
 which was breached when Liam Ashley was killed in the back of a prison van. No doubt it has been breached on countless other occasions all around the country before then and since then. That is a clear case again of corporate manslaughter going unpunished because we do not have a law to deal with such poor behaviour by departmental officials. 
Another section of the same manual states that prisoners on escort should not be placed in “unnecessary discomfort” yet prisoners are transferred in small closed-in cages with poor light bad ventilation wooden seats and metal floors. When people go to jail they should not have to forfeit their human rights suffer the inhumanity of others or be subjected to a life of perpetual and unrelenting cruelty. Yet clearly the Government has allowed that to happen during a time highlighted by this country’s continual dishonouring of international laws and conventions on human rights. 
In fact this Government’s failure to protect teenage prisoners from violent adult offenders was criticised in 2004 by none other than the United Nations Committee Against Torture—for heaven’s sake! It recommended that the Government take immediate steps to make the necessary changes. 
Simon Power 
: That’s right. 
HONE HARAWIRA 
: I pick up on the strident comments from Simon Power. The Government has ignored this recommendation and the Ashley family has paid dearly. It makes the current prattle about “changing procedures and protocols” weak and rather pathetic. Resolving this crisis is not about chaining up prisoners; it is about the Government taking immediate action to address ongoing breaches of people’s human rights particularly the rights of the most vulnerable. 
We do not want to see any repeats of the “goon squad” in Canterbury the serious assaults at Mangaroa or the corruption at Rimutaka Prison. We do not want more lives lost because neither the Department of Corrections nor the Government is willing to accept its international and most basic human rights responsibilities. Jail is a sentence designed to punish people by depriving them of their liberty but it should not expose inmates to behaviour that would be treated as criminal if it were carried on outside the prison gates. That is where the Maori Party is most concerned about what is happening here. 
Our society is struggling to deal with the way in which vulnerable people in our communities those who are known as “low-income consumers” battle to cope with the poverty that denies them access to the most basic of human rights. The last couple of weeks have shown a classic case of the nation erupting in outrage when agents of the State dealt with a family’s heartache and pain with cold and brutal heartlessness and with an immediate refusal to accept responsibility. Yet here we have exactly the same thing—another tragedy another life lost and again a refusal by the agency responsible to say sorry. 
The Ombudsmen’s report was clear: “Throughout this investigation we were saddened to find a theme of lack of communication between National Office and front-line staff which has resulted in numerous different practices developing at the front line.” Again to tautoko the comments from Simon Power that was almost word for word the same comments in the 2005 report which described the conflict between the national office and frontline staff as a “major concern”; a “gulf”; and a “major ground for criticism of central management”. 
Yet despite the repeated evidence the chief executive can still say: “I do not agree.” and he justifies his views by saying that his department is a very large organisation with a lot of staff. Hello! Is that not all the more reason for sorting out communication problems? Former inmates current inmates prison support workers Department of Corrections staff criminologists audit officers and now even the Ombudsmen all talk about dissatisfaction and low morale between national and regional staff—yet still the boss refuses to see what is right there under his nose. 
During Nelson Mandela’s imprisonment by South Africa’s apartheid Government he kept long and detailed journals describing the inhumanities imposed by prison staff in the name of justice. In one such letter he wrote this short comment which is really quite moving: “There are times when my heart almost stops beating slowed down by heavy loads of longing [for freedom].” We in this House have the power to make sure that this system never again allows a heart to stop beating through departmental incompetence and Government complicity in the denial of human rights. I urge us all strength in the pursuit of that goal. Kia ora tatou.