Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .

Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 13 Hansard (4 December) . . Page.. 4408 ..

MS TUCKER (continuing):

Mandatory reporting is another really important issue. We should mandate that abuse be reported if it is suspected by professional people. If we do not have accompanying that mandatory reporting very solid resources to support those people and the young people concerned, we are not going to end up with any huge improvement. In fact, sometimes it can be even worse, as has been the experience in other States. So I would just like to stress that fact. We have an opportunity as a community to see, often very early, people at risk of ending up in our prisons. We should support them at that stage so that we will not have to have these sorts of discussions in the long run, hopefully, about whether we need to build another prison. I do support the view that we need such a facility in the ACT, for all the reasons outlined by other members.

MR HUMPHRIES (Attorney-General) (3.55), in reply: Mr Speaker, I welcome the contributions of members. I was particularly impressed by the comments of Ms Follett. She indicated in a very sensible way the kinds of policies which ought to drive any correctional system, not just in this Territory but anywhere else, and which ought to be the basis of a bipartisan policy to bring this initiative forward. It obviously will not be easy to persuade some people that the ACT ought to have facilities which are more elaborate than they are now. Clearly, some people will be concerned about issues such as the location of such a facility, the cost, and so on. Those are real issues which are going to be difficult in some ways to chart our way through. I hope, as a result of this debate and perhaps the debate to be held in the community, that there are opportunities now to explain to the people of the ACT that building a correctional facility is not just about having something nice on the capital works program for a short period; it also is about significantly readjusting the parameters of the Territory to pick up a number of individuals who, frankly, have been overlooked and sent away in the past, whose needs have not been properly addressed.

I completely agree with the suggestion that the human element is the most important factor in this process. In my view, to establish a facility in the ACT which saves us money but merely duplicates the problems of the New South Wales gaol system here in the ACT would be a tremendous opportunity lost. We must focus on a system which ultimately has the effect of reducing recidivism. That is the objective of any decent correctional system, and it ought to be the objective of our system. We have, in a sense, a blank canvas on which to work, and perhaps we can achieve that.

Just to pick up a couple of other short points, the Cooma Gaol option is certainly an option that the Government is prepared to consider. I think the debate today has probably indicated that there are serious problems with the Cooma option, particularly, to do with issues like access by relatives to people who are incarcerated. Nonetheless, it is an option that will be looked at in the course of debate about where we go from here. Mr Moore raised the question of why there were such large increases in the rates of incarceration in the Remand Centre. The answer appears to be that there has been a very significant increase in clear-up rates in the ACT. That is having some effect on the population of our Remand Centre. It is not necessarily that there has been an increase in crime, but the number of people apprehended in some categories has doubled or been more than was the case before. That accounts for a large number of people being put in the Remand Centre, and ultimately in the New South Wales gaol system.

Question resolved in the affirmative.

Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .