Another bad report for prison building programme

new-zealand-national-party

Thu Sep 06 2007 12:00:00 GMT+1200 (New Zealand Standard Time)

Another bad report for prison building programme

Thursday, 6 September 2007, 10:15 am
Press Release: New Zealand National Party

Simon Power MP
National Party Justice & Corrections Spokesman

5 September 2007

Yet another report has found that Corrections has badly handled taxpayers’ money in the building of prisons, says National’s Justice & Corrections spokesman, Simon Power.

“The Treasury-commissioned report into the building of Spring Hill and Otago prisons shows these projects were badly planned, that savings could have been made had they not pre-purchased materials that locked them into designs they could not change, and that they contained unnecessary luxuries.

“This backs up everything I have been saying about the regional prisons development project – that it was an extravagant use of taxpayers’ money.

“Corrections used a contracting method that demanded the pre-purchasing of materials that locked them into designs that were more costly than they needed to be.”

The report says ‘most of the significant materials … had been pre-purchased’ and this ‘committed not only capital, but also to the design and construction strategies – the cost of changing these strategies at this stage would be prohibitively high, despite the potential opportunity for better value-for-money.’

“For two years, Corrections has argued that part of the reason for the building project’s budget blowout of $490 million was because of rising prices for materials such as steel.

“This doesn’t seem to tally with the report’s finding that these materials were pre-purchased to guard against exactly that.

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“The report also says the two prisons exceeded the design standards of Australian prisons – that they were built with toilets in every cell, rather than communal facilities.

“It estimates that savings of not having these personal facilities would have been in the region of $11.5 million. That’s staggering.

“It also says cultural and religious facilities were of a higher standard than in equivalent Australian prisons, as were dining and recreational areas, and that even at the end of construction they could have saved $600,000 on landscaping

“Damien O'Connor said these prisons were ‘not gold-plated’. This report shows he was wrong.”

Ends

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