Page 249 - Week 01 - Wednesday, 13 February 1991
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concern him. I would have thought, of course, that the Federal Labor Government should have commented earlier on those matters, particularly because there are a number of Federal prisoners in that gaol system.
That is not a cheap shot. It is just an observation that I believe should have been made, and it should not have been left entirely to our Government alone to have to take up this issue with the New South Wales Government. Members are well aware that if we press this issue too much we could face the very difficult situation of the New South Wales Government making the point that our prisoners constitute a minute proportion of those incarcerated and asking us to take them back overnight. I am not suggesting that the Minister in New South Wales would contemplate doing that, but one can understand what provocation can sometimes produce.
Having spoken to the corrective services review committee the other day, I am more concerned that inflammatory comments - and I am pleased that Mr Connolly did not indulge in any - made about the treatment of prisoners might well result, in some circumstances, not so much in reprisals but in a culture in the New South Wales system that might lead to, in the interim stage we are at, our prisoners - I will use that term - not receiving disinterested and objective treatment in some of the more distant installations that the New South Wales Government runs.
Coming to the points that the department has asked me to make to the house, we have now in fact interviewed 76 of our 93 known ACT prisoners. This advice to me is probably a few weeks old in terms of the program of actually visiting and speaking to our prisoners. I am advised that hours out of cells are now increasing. That might be some solace, but the norm is still not the acceptable one that we would seek. On my advice, access to education programs, which was one of the great deprivations, has been restored. We are still working through a great deal of information relating to our prisoner classifications, entitlements under laws and present regulations, practical difficulties over warrants for various unpaid fine issues, and so on.
About two-thirds of those 76 surveyed intended to return to the ACT, and the majority to family living situations. Many will require work preparation and skill courses before they can re-enter the work force, and that is another challenge facing us in the Territory - the long-neglected post-gaol programs to ensure that we are not returning to the community people who are more brutalised than when they originally went to gaol. At the time of the survey, just after Christmas, all mentally ill ACT prisoners were being well cared for by the standards that the ACT would expect - this is on my advice, again.
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