Kelvin Davis Minister of Sunshine

Kelvin Davis was a killer in opposition. His relentless campaign of prison leaks and revelations helped end the career of National’s hapless minister of corrections (the since-retired and forgotten Sam Lotu-Iiga).

Now Davis is the minister of corrections himself and it’s all sunshine and good cheer. ‘‘Exciting’’ is a recurring word.

The friendly MP for Tai Tokerau is excited, for instance, about the revolutionary policy of slashing the prison population.

No Kiwi politician or party has seriously proposed this before. New Zealand remains one of the keenest jailers in the West, and governments of both sorts have outbid each other on law and order.

So hasn’t Labour been part of the problem?

‘‘I’m not going to say …’’ says the politician, before stopping to regroup. ‘‘Governments for a long, long time have tried to outdo each other as being tough on crime. We actually need to be smart on crime.’’

Labour promises to cut the prison muster by 30 per cent in 15 years, but how? If you ask Davis, you get a wash of generalities – ‘‘multifaceted solutions’’ – and pledges to examine the research.

Sometimes he sounds like the Minister of Blah.

‘‘You can’t just say, ‘Oh, Corrections, you need to paint the cell a different colour’ or, you know ... that’s quite superficial stuff.’’

Instead of concentrating on the prisons – they are just marshalling yards – you need to consider the wider problems that produce an ever-expanding horde of prisoners. These ‘‘drivers’’ are what matter most.

‘‘We actually have to look at things like the mental health situation, we have to look at the housing situation, we have to look at poverty, we have to look at how our people are being treated now – because one of the biggest drivers of the prison population is violence.

‘‘How do we address that? What are the drivers of violence? Is it having a lack of money, is it having no hope, and despair? ...

‘‘What are the drivers? And we have to work that out and then base our solutions on that.’’

The Government has ‘‘to look at all the options’’.

Don’t we need something a little more specific? Will cutting the prison population, for instance, involve cutting prison sentences?

‘‘Possibly, yeah. We need to look at all the options. We need to make decisions based on decent evidence, based on what’s worked.’’

What about letting people out earlier on bail? This, too, seems one of the options, though: ‘‘we’ve got to keep the country safe. This is a balancing act, this isn’t a quick fix. We keep the country safe but

‘‘Most areas have had their big challenges, but all we’ve done in corrections in New Zealand is go, ‘Oh, prison population’s going up, let’s spend another billion dollars’."

also address the types of crime, also the drivers of crime.’’

Davis’s vagueness raises questions about how much research he and Labour did before deciding on the policy. Or is he just keeping his powder dry for the upcoming political battle?

Certainly he understands that prison reform faces huge political problems, including the resistance of many voters.

The fear of crime builds, he says, even when crime rates go down. And then there are ‘‘sentinel events’’, sudden spectacular crimes splashed through the media.

‘‘What some of the research shows is you only need a sentinel event out in the community and you get a law change because one person’s done something really horrible. And then that might drive the prison population up.’’

The ‘‘loud voices’’ of the lawand-order lobbyists spread fear even when ‘‘one of the things is that in recent years the reality of the actual levels of crime is a lot less than people’s perception.

‘‘And the older people are the more they believe it is getting worse.’’

That is one of the challenges, he says, ‘‘but that’s what makes this exciting. You know, because corrections is an area that we just haven’t really addressed as a country, and that’s what makes it exciting.

‘‘Education had Tomorrow’s Schools, and [there have been] reforms in the health services. Most areas have had their big challenges, but all we’ve done in corrections in New Zealand is go, ‘Oh, prison population’s going up, let’s spend another billion dollars’.’’

Prison reform might sound a bit limp-wristed, but Davis points out that some notoriously toughminded American states like Texas are looking at it. That’s because prisons cost a fortune.

As former National finance minister Bill English put it, prisons are ‘‘a fiscal and moral failure’’. But under National the prison muster went on rising and new jails were needed.

Davis has certain advantages in spearheading prison reform. He’s on the Right of Labour and nobody could call him a chinless liberal.

The affable politician is also something of a tough nut, an outspoken critic of gangs, a supporter of charter schools – he threatened to resign if the two in his electorate were closed – and can preach both the moral and the fiscal failure of the jail.

His parents ‘‘had very strong moral values and believed that doing what’s right isn’t always easy but it’s always right’’.

‘‘And there’s the line – there’s what’s right on one side and then wrong on the other. Which side of the line are you walking on?’’

Panapa Davis and his Pa¯ keha¯ wife Glenys taught their kids that education mattered and they would go to school even when floods hit Kawakawa, as often happened.

‘‘There were times when the whole of Kawakawa would miss school because of a flood or something like that, and the town would be cut off. And there’d be four kids at school – the Davis kids! ... It drove [us] insane.

‘‘We wanted the day off like our mates.’’

As well as discipline, there was family bonding through sport.

The Davises were ‘‘obsessed’’ and watched everything, he says. Cricket! Rugby! League! Soccer! They even played it, not always well. ‘‘My sister was the only one who was any good at rugby.’’

The result was a family of achievers, with one brother a senior sergeant, another a district court judge, and a sister who’s a teacher.

Davis went to teachers’ college after the seventh form and ended up as principal of Kaitaia Intermediate, a troubled school whose trustees say Davis turned it around.

The family was monolingual, but Davis learned Ma¯ ori at school and spoke only Ma¯ ori to his own kids. He even required them to write a diary in the language.

‘‘My father’s mother and father were fluent native speakers of te reo Ma¯ ori ... I’m really sort of angry with my grandparents that they had this skill and they never passed it on.’’

Now his party is promising to make Ma¯ ori available to all school kids. ‘‘We really need all of New Zealand to get on board ... to help keep this taonga.’’

Davis backed the idea of a Ma¯ ori prison, but Labour wouldn’t buy it.

Today he’s also the minister in charge of iwi-Crown relations, which aims to build a future partnership as opposed to settling grievances of the past.

What exactly this involves remains vague, but Davis says it means Ma¯ ori can tell the Crown about their aspirations without the Crown telling them what they should want. And Ma¯ ori, of course, ‘‘are excited by this’’.