‘Organic’ prison building blows budget
new-zealand-national-party
Thu Sep 06 2007 12:00:00 GMT+1200 (New Zealand Standard Time)
‘Organic’ prison building blows budget
Thursday, 6 September 2007, 3:26 pm
Press Release: New Zealand National Party
Simon Power MP
National Party Justice & Corrections Spokesman
6 September 2007
‘Organic’ prison building blows budget
It seems that nothing more mysterious than an ‘organic approach’ to construction was responsible for pushing the cost of Spring Hill and Otago prisons through the roof, says National’s Justice & Corrections spokesman, Simon Power.
“The Treasury-commissioned report says Corrections said it took an ‘organic approach’ to value management for the regional prisons, but no one seems to know what that means.
“After question time today even Parliament was still unclear on what it means.
“We are also still unclear as to why the budget for these prisons blew out by more than $141 million.
“This confusion typifies the prisons construction process, which used an unproven contracting method that meant no one knew what the costs were likely to be till well after work had begun.
“What the report does reveal very clearly is that a considerable saving of taxpayers’ money could have been made quite easily.
“It says facilities at the prisons exceed those of comparable Australian prisons and that ‘significant savings in capital cost, as well as operational savings’ could have been made if features such as ensuites for medium-low security inmates and excessive landscaping had been excluded.
“It’s more evidence of the cavalier use of taxpayers’ money when a department can spend $11.5 million on ensuites in cells because they would be ‘more attractive than communal showers’.
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“What does that say about how the Government has managed this project?
“And how can Minister Damien O’Connor continue to claim these prisons are not gold-plated.
“It is revealing that the report says one option for reducing costs would be to reintroduce the private sector in the development and management of prisons because it ‘has proved very cost effective’ in Australia.
“Could private providers have done a worse job than this?”
ENDS
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