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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 12 Hansard (11 November) . . Page.. 3896 ..

MS REILLY (continuing):

with which people could be transferred interstate is of concern. We should be looking at providing, through Quamby, a broad range of services that can respond to the needs of the juveniles within the ACT. This, I am sure, will be looked at under the review of the Children's Services Act and the other reviews of Quamby. This issue should be tackled before we move into legislation that allows for the transfer of juveniles interstate. That is the basis for my opposition to this legislation. We have a number of people with complex needs, but we should be able to address them through the services we provide at Quamby.

Mention was made in the presentation speech of recommendation 168 of the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody. This should still be complied with through the system that is available today. If a young Aboriginal offender needs to be transferred interstate because of community connections or to be closer to his or her family, there is a method for doing that through the court system. This is already available. I would not like to see a change at this point in time, as a review is concurrently going on. Those are the issues that are related to children's services and the transfer of juveniles interstate.

The other part of the debate today is the Crimes (Amendment) Bill (No. 5). It deals with juveniles who serve adult sentences and then have to complete the balance of their juvenile sentences. The issues raised in the explanatory memorandum and the speech by the Attorney-General relate to the problems associated with juveniles who have been in an adult institution and who return to a juvenile institution. This amendment, I understand, will give the courts the opportunity to resolve that problem and not force or require a juvenile to return to a juvenile detention centre after serving an adult sentence. This is a commonsense amendment to the Act.

Mr Stefaniak: You said "the Attorney-General". It was me. They are concurrent Bills.

MS REILLY: This is a commonsense amendment to overcome the problems created by the mixture of juveniles and adults. The amendment recognises the differences between how we deal with juveniles and how we deal with adults. We have two separate justice systems in recognition of the differences in needs. One of the reasons given for making the changes to the transfer of juveniles interstate was that it is similar to the way in which transfers from the Belconnen Remand Centre can be managed. I think they are quite separate issues. What happens in an adults detention system is not the same as would be considered suitable for a juvenile system. I think the issues around transfers interstate for juveniles are more important and more complex than are those for adults, particularly when we are talking about the Belconnen Remand Centre. We are talking there about prisoners on remand. We are not talking about people in custodial sentences, as they are in Quamby.

There are parts of these amendments that Labor has considerable difficulty with because we are concerned about what happens to the juveniles serving detention sentences in the ACT. We think they should continue to remain the responsibility of the ACT and we should be looking at Quamby itself, the physical infrastructure, the staffing and the other services that may be required within that institution to deal with the needs of the juvenile offenders within the system.

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