Simon Power MP
National Party Justice & Corrections Spokesman

10 May 2007

Milton Hilton a monument to bad management

The Otago regional prison at Milton, which opens today, is a monument to the Labour Government’s slack handling of hundreds of millions of taxpayers’ money, says National’s Justice & Corrections spokesman, Simon Power.

“The New Zealand justice system needs the capacity that this prison brings, but I am in no doubt there has been huge incompetence surrounding its cost and that of the other three prisons in the Regional Prisons Construction Project.

“Things could have been done much, much better.

“This is a prison whose beds cost an average of $650,000 each at a time when Real Estate Institute figures were showing the median house price in the Milburn area was $130,000.

“At those figures it is probably accurately known locally as the Milton Hilton.

“The landscaping bill was $3.3 million – the second highest of the four prisons – out of a total landscaping bill of $11 million.

“Corrections also used an untried contracting method on the project, which meant indicative costs were not established before construction began, and which also meant if costs blew out, taxpayers would carry the can. And that’s what happened.

“In the case of Milton, work began 17 months before they had any idea of the likely cost, and the original estimated cost of $155 million blew out to $218 million – and who knows what the real final figure will be?

“All of this resulted in a four-prison project originally estimated to cost $400 million blowing out to nearly $900 million.

“And then they put in under-floor heating and flat screen TVs, and Minister Damien O’Connor has the nerve to say the new prisons are ‘not gold plated’.

“This prison is a monument to Labour’s waste of taxpayers’ money.”

ENDS

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