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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 12 Hansard (11 November) . . Page.. 3905 ..

MS REILLY (continuing):

innovation about trying to resolve the issues within Quamby. We have to recognise that we have one institution. There is a variety of ways in which young offenders might be managed, including custodial sentences. We have one institution; so we need to look at ways in which the whole process can be managed. This process obviously has a number of players within it. It has to do with those juveniles who are in custody; the staff; the support, training and management of those staff; and how we look at what we have before us - Quamby.

It is too easy and too simple to take the attitude that, if it is a troublesome child, for whatever reason - I realise that it is not just one instance - we send this young person interstate. This is where the concern is. We need to recognise some of the responsibilities we have within the ACT to manage the issues around juvenile justice. It probably goes much broader than just the actual institution of Quamby. We talked about the number of possible institutions within New South Wales. I did not realise that we had any control - once the juvenile was in the New South Wales system - over where they can go. I am quite sure that just the quantity available in New South Wales is not always supported by the quality of institutions. Quamby is a quite modern facility. It has only recently been rebuilt. I am quite sure that some of the New South Wales facilities are considerably older. Whether they would be providing a better quality of service is one of the issues. It is about quality.

One of the other concerns about the legislation, which Mr Moore and Mr Stefaniak raised, is in relation to the reporting and review of these transfers. Apart from the fact that it is done afterwards, it is reporting to an Assembly committee. It is not even reporting to the Assembly. I think it is a quite serious issue if we are looking at transferring juveniles interstate.

Mrs Littlewood raised the issue of options. We are not cutting off any options by opposing this legislation. What we are doing is saying that there is a process in place at this time - through the court system - to transfer juveniles interstate. Ms Tucker said that that system has just recently been used. There is a process there. So, I consider that this process should continue to be used at this time, because we have a review of the Children's Services Act currently going on. I think this will be an extensive, important review. Rather than trying to pre-empt some of the findings of that review, why do we not consider the system that is operational at this time and continue in that way? In relation to managing some of the very difficult and very complex juveniles within the system, maybe we need to look at some of the management practices within that, to ensure that we can deal with those situations within the ACT institution.

MR STEFANIAK (Minister for Education and Training) (12.19): Madam Deputy Speaker, I will just reiterate what I said earlier. We would not have brought forward this amendment if there had not been problems. If the staff were quite happy with the situation and thought that we had all the answers ourselves within our one institution, this would not have been brought forward. I think it is unrealistic to say that in one institution we can do absolutely everything. Sometimes we have as many as 500 young people going through Quamby in any one year. As I indicated earlier, a lot of them are there for much more serious offences than would have been the case, say, 10 years ago.

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