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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 14 Hansard (10 December) . . Page.. 4582 ..

MR MOORE (continuing):

We are particularly critical of people who have not been found guilty being held in custody in other places. Certainly, I know that Mr Humphries and I - probably all members - have been involved in Amnesty International and writing letters to governments in other countries saying that they ought not to keep people detained when they have not been found guilty of an offence. We have to be very careful that we are not detaining people for any length of time. We are conscious that our courts are very reluctant to detain people who have not been found guilty of a crime. However, it is clearly an appropriate response in some circumstances. Nobody would say that Martin Bryant should have been left to walk the streets prior to his trial. That is one extreme on which we would all agree. At the other extreme, we would say that somebody who has been charged with a relatively minor traffic offence should not be detained in custody until their case comes before a court. Probably for a series of reasons, we have an increased number of people on remand over a longer time. Ms Follett spoke to that quite appropriately.

How do we solve this problem? The proposal put before us is that we allow these people to remain on detention but we find somewhere to put them, probably Goulburn Gaol. It is some years since I went through Goulburn Gaol. I did it when I was first elected.

Ms McRae: We can arrange for you to go again.

MR MOORE: Having spoken to Ms Follett about her relatively recent trip there, I believe it is indeed, as Ms McRae interjects, time for me to go again and have a look. I was horrified by what I saw in the main part of Goulburn Gaol when I went there in 1989 or 1990. I did not go into the remand section of Goulburn Gaol, which I understand is separate, so I will need to see that. When we are going through legislation that provides for two years' gaol or three years' gaol, it is important for us to understand exactly what that means and entails. Since my visit to Goulburn Gaol I have visited a number of modern gaols which I think were far better. I should be fair to Goulburn Gaol and say that there was a new section of Goulburn Gaol which was very different from the old gaol, with its old cells and bare cage inside old walls. Perhaps they have been able to continue modifying it.

The question before us is how we solve the problem with the Remand Centre. I think that comes back to the Government implementing a temporary solution to deal with the symptoms, because you have to deal with the symptoms, but then taking on the responsibility of working out and solving the problem as a whole. Perhaps it means more community service orders; perhaps it means a stronger search within the community to find ways to deal with keeping people out of gaol. It seems to me - and we had this debate when we talked about a gaol last week - that, if we can avoid what Ms Follett called the bricks-and-mortar solution for penalties, then we should avoid it. I strongly favour community service orders. I looked at what was done in Canberra a couple of years ago under the Labor administration and I was singularly impressed. I think that we need to work on that and enhance it so that the courts feel comfortable with such penalties as an alternative to the bricks-and-mortar solution of sending people to gaols in New South Wales and so that people are not inclined to ensure that they stay as long as they can in remand so that they do not have to go to gaols in New South Wales.

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