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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1999 Week 8 Hansard (25 August) . . Page.. 2410 ..

MR SMYTH (continuing):

adulthood hear of the adventures of their friends. We, as members of this place, understand how some kids get themselves into trouble; indeed, how some kids have no hope as their personal situations lead them to end up in such situations.

Mr Hargreaves: You have not got a clue.

MR SMYTH: Mr Hargreaves interjects that I do not have a clue. Mr Hargreaves has no idea. It sounds to me that Mr Hargreaves will simply sit over there and interject for the sake of interjecting. It is the sort of comment that we get continually from the Labor Party on any attempt by the Government to improve services to the people of Canberra. They stand in the way of everything that this Government does. For instance, we heard today in question time how good the situation is with the budget being in the black and how good the situation is for unemployment with the numbers going down on unemployment, yet we get no credit for that from the Opposition. It is never good enough. The reason it is never good enough is that they are content to stand in our way because they are bitter that they are still on the Opposition benches when they all thought they would be swanning it over here in government.

The reality is that what we have here is a government that is well able to progress issues because it believes that it has responsibilities to a clever, caring capital. We believe that the suggestions that the coroner has made are reasonable suggestions. That is why we are following them. We have put Quamby into the one portfolio for corrections because we believe that it is appropriate to do so. Mr Temporary Deputy Speaker, this recommendation was made after an extensive inquiry by the coroner himself, the person responsible for looking into the death of the young gentleman. It is his suggestion, it is his recommendation, that the Government is responding to.

I can imagine what would have happened if we had not responded to it. We would have been accused of being arrogant and out of touch and of ignoring what the coroner has said. We actually do it and what are we being accused of? Of being arrogant and out of touch and of not agreeing with what the coroner has said. The coroner is the person who has inquired into this matter in great detail and the Government has looked at what the coroner has said and has simply said, "We agree". What happens? We get beaten up for agreeing with the coroner. If we had disagreed with him, we would have been beaten up as well. You have to ask why. The coroner simply said that corrections should be in one portfolio and we agreed.

The new administrative arrangements made reflect the coroner's recommendation. We have done what we believe to be a good thing, the right thing and the correct thing in this matter. This Government is a government that will look at the whole issue of corrections to make sure that we get it right because we actually do care. We do care about this matter and we have strategies in place in terms of how we look at the whole approach. We have an active community policing approach where the police are in the schools dealing with all children and encouraging them to be good citizens.

Our approach is that we would certainly like to see people not go to prison. We do not want people in prison. In many cases, it should be avoided. But then there are cases where people deserve to go to prison, where judges will sentence young people to Quamby and they will sentence older people to prison. With that in mind, we have made

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