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We have had some consensus on the need for periodic detention. There have been a few hiccups in the process of getting this legislation in place. I did hear, when the announcement was made about proceeding with this Bill a few weeks ago, a claim by, I think, someone purporting to represent workers at either the new Quamby centre next-door to the old Quamby centre, which is now the Symonston Periodic Detention Centre, or the latter centre, that the juxtaposition of those two centres constituted a breach of UN guidelines on the way in which correctional institutions should be established. I indicate that that is, in fact, the opposite of the truth. I have a copy of article 26(3) of the UN Standard Minimum Rules for the Administration of Juvenile Justice, which requires:

Juveniles in institutions shall be kept separate from adults and shall be detained in a separate institution or in a separate part of an institution also holding adults.

That is the case here. There is, I am advised, no intercourse at all between the Symonston centre and the Quamby centre. There is a quite substantial fence between those two centres, and a new fence is being or has been erected to eliminate visual contact between those two centres. So, people should not feel that there is any danger or risk in having these two centres side by side. There are probably economies to be obtained by having the administration that way, but it is still important to be able to separate adults and juveniles in those circumstances. We must also bear in mind that the Symonston centre contains people who are not, in a sense, in imprisonment. There is little point in trying to escape from the Symonston Periodic Detention Centre on, say, a Saturday night, because at 4.30 on Sunday afternoon you would be let out anyway. So, there is very little point in feeling that this is some kind of prison with high barbed wire fences.  In fact, you could arguably not have any fences at all; it would serve the same purpose.

Mr Speaker, this is a quite important initiative. There is an amendment I will be moving during the detail stage. I do thank members for their support for this initiative. I hope that it will produce a system of sentencing in our courts that is more responsive to the things we need to do to produce at the end of the day what really matters, which is not punishment or retribution but rehabilitation and the correction of behaviour and scope to prevent that behaviour from being repeated. That is what really matters most in our system, and I hope that we can produce that with this Bill.

Question resolved in the affirmative.

Bill agreed to in principle.

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