DAVID GARRETT (ACT): I rise on behalf of the ACT Party to support the Corrections Amendment Bill (No 2), which was introduced by the previous Government and is now supported by the current Government. This bill is a very good illustration of what is wrong with our system. I will leaf through it quickly, as it is quite a big document. The explanatory note—and of course the Law and Order Committee was dominated by Labour members—states that new section 79(3) “allows the possible use of alcohol in both Christian and non-Christian religious ceremonies …”. That is utter, utter naivety. Do people really believe that the motivation for wanting alcohol is religious? Come on! It is just absolute nonsense.

Hon Darren Hughes: For the Catholic prisoners it definitely is.

DAVID GARRETT: I was born a Catholic, I say to Mr Hughes, and we never had wine with Communion.

It is actually quite possible, if one changes one’s philosophy, to eliminate cellphones and drugs completely from prisons. I say that because I have seen it. I was in Arizona and California last year, looking at the prison systems. I am not talking about the tent jails, although I thought they were a pretty good idea; I am talking about ordinary jails, such as we have here. There are some quite crucial differences. I visited a high-rise jail in Arizona. I was with former MP Stephen Franks. We talked to the senior guards and to the ordinary rank and file guards. We wandered around the prison at will. We were not shepherded by minders. We were told we could talk to anyone we liked, including the prisoners, incidentally. I remember asking one of the guards about the extent of the cellphone problem in the prison. The Americans are polite people, and the guard said: “They are not allowed cellphones, sir.” We said: “Yes, we understand that, but how many do you find?”. The guard said: “Excuse me? The prisoners are not allowed cellphones, sir.” Once he had worked out what we were asking him, the answer was none—zero.

Hon Darren Hughes: Ha, ha!

DAVID GARRETT: In a moment I will tell Mr Hughes why that is.

We then went on to the issue of drugs. We asked what percentage of positive drug tests they found. Another of the guards said: “Yes, we drug test.” We asked: “What percentage of positive results do you get?”. One guard asked the other: “Hey Randy, didn’t we get one last year?”. We said: “What, 1 percent?”. He replied: “Oh no, sir, one positive result.” I will tell members how they do it. It is quite easy. Firstly, the prisoners do not have contact visits. Even lawyers are required to sit in a room next to the prisoner. There is a small slit, sufficient to put perhaps a 5 or 6-page affidavit through, but otherwise there are no contact visits. That is one way to ensure that there are simply no cellphone or drug problems in the prison. However, it is probably possible to get LSD embedded in a paper and passed through by a corrupt or crooked lawyer. That is probably possible.

The next reason why there are no cellphone or drug problems in this prison is punishment. Ms Turei said—and this is an old sore—that offenders go to prison as a punishment, but not for punishment. That remark sounds wonderful to middle-class people like all the members here, because deprivation of liberty for us would be a huge punishment. Deprivation of the right to go down to the dairy on Sunday morning and get the paper, or call in and have a beer on the way home, would be a major incursion on us. But for some people it does not matter—they do not care. So that remark just demonstrates a complete lack of understanding of the reality. It is possible to eliminate cellphones and drugs from prisons, and that is how it is done. There are no contact visits, even with lawyers.

The other issue is punishment for breaches. Arizona and California have the systems that we used to have here. If someone is found to have broken the rules, he or she is punished—solitary confinement and a No. 1 diet. We used to do that too, and, funnily enough, we did not have anywhere near as much crime. I wonder why! In Arizona, prisoners lose various rights. Our prisoners lose the right to vote. Mr Hughes might like to help me—he is a very voluble chap—by telling me of any other rights they lose. But in Arizona prisoners lose the right to have the haircut they like, they lose the right to wear the clothes they like, they lose the right to smoke, they lose the right to have salt on their food—I cannot quite understand that one, quite frankly—and they lose the right to have tomato sauce.

The crucial point is that the Arizonians and the Californians accept that criminals, by their actions, have deprived themselves of rights. They should not and do not have the same level of rights as the rest of us. [Interruption ] This is not a campaign speech, I say to Mr Hughes. It is a new one. This is a good start.

Prisoners also lose the right to privacy. I was talking to a prominent defence lawyer before the election. He is not an ACT supporter and did not vote for us. He told us that in his opinion the loss of the right to privacy, as occurs in the Arizona prison, would be a major deterrent here. He pointed out to me that frequently in court—I do not practise criminal law so I am going on what he said—the prosecution will ask for a deterrent sentence. The judge will ask: “Well, who’s it going to deter? The only ones here are the convict, the lawyers, and me. No one is going to know. Where is the deterrent, Mr Prosecutor?”. My friend, whom I will not name, said that he believes that if they did here what is done in Arizona, which is that on conviction a prisoner’s name, photograph, crime committed, and sentence given go straight on to the website, it would be a deterrent. This was from a person who makes his living solely from defending criminals. He said that losing the right to privacy, among other things, would be a far more effective deterrent than a lot of the things we do now.

I want to touch on the Hon Phil Goff’s point about the causes of crime. We hear about this all the time. In my maiden speech I spoke about the “unemployment causes crime” myth, and I want to expand on that and go on to another point.

Hon Darren Hughes: You quoted yourself in your last speech.

DAVID GARRETT: This is a new speech, I say to Mr Hughes. He will not hear anything familiar. Those on the left say, and they have said it a couple of times, that the safe society of the 1960s was illusory. It was illusory because there was a huge level of unreported family and sexual violence. I was trying to follow Mr Goff’s logic. If that is right, if in the past we had hidden violent crime because it was all happening in the home, that is a very easy argument to make. We can never prove or disprove it—it was all hidden, so we did not know about it, if that is where it was really happening.

I heard the Hon Phil Goff a second ago ask what we are going to do about this terrible epidemic that is coming—abused children becoming the next generation of criminals. There is a fault of logic there, because if that is the real cause, why was it not happening in the 1960s? Or does hidden violence only cause hidden violence? I do not know about that. It does not seem right. It is faulty logic. This bill is a good start and we have no problem supporting it, but it is no more than a good start.