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

Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2001 Week 7 Hansard (21 June) . . Page.. 2383 ..

MR HARGREAVES: No. Mr Speaker, a number of things ought to have been included in this budget, given the amount of spare cash.

Mr Berry: It is not the intelligence that counts; it is the principle, Michael.

MR HARGREAVES: But that is a movable feast, Mr Berry. The point that I would like to make for the record is that it would have been nice to have seen a provision, any provision, based on some sort of academic assessment of the amount of money that we will be paying for the new prison. We received the Rengain report after a tortuous journey for it. The Rengain report talks about the possibility of paying $110 million for the prison over three financial years but, essentially, a two-year program. The cost for the first year is $6 million, for the second it is $30-odd million and for the third it is $70-odd million.

It would have been nice to have seen a provision for the interest payment that we would have to make for that loan, given that the Chief Minister has said that we will borrow the money. The planning minister has been very quiet on that. That is sad news because we are going to find out later that we will have a very large bill to pay. I think that it is a social cost that we need to pay and I am sure that it is a social cost we will pay for the privilege, in fact, of being able to change offending behaviour of people.

I noticed in the press recently that somebody canvassed yet again the possibility of using the Cooma gaol. The only way I would stick my hand up in the air for using the Cooma gaol is if somebody brought it back to the ACT brick by bloody brick and stuck it here, because it is most imperative that we bring our people back home. When the courts in the ACT sentence somebody to incarceration, it is our responsibility to accommodate them. We cannot abrogate that and send them to New South Wales. It is our job to change their offending behaviour, to change recidivist propensities, and to provide opportunities for people to change their ways. It should be remembered that when we sentence people to gaol, we sentence their families as well, often to poverty and certainly to social ostracism, and we need to address those issues as well.

I was disappointed not to see in the budget for the outyears further funding for Corrective Services to address the other end of the continuum for the restorative justice principle. Mr Moore and I disagree on many things, but we do agree on the restorative justice model. There are not lots of people in this place who understand what the restorative justice model is about. It starts when a person is convicted-not necessarily sentenced, but convicted-and it continues when they are restored into the community and the community is restored around them.

We tend to send people to gaol in New South Wales and, when the door to the gaol is opened, to let them go and that is the end of it. In fact, if a rehabilitation model is halfway successful, when they get out of gaol they are only halfway there, maybe two-thirds of the way there. We need to put some money into the resettlement, the readjustment. Mr Speaker, if a male relative of yours went off to gaol for five or six years and the family remained in the ACT, imagine how horrible that would be.

MR SPEAKER: What, them staying here?

MR HARGREAVES: No, if they went off to gaol.

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