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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2001 Week 8 Hansard (9 August) . . Page.. 2654 ..

MR OSBORNE (continuing):

committee has supplied. This matter has consumed the committee for a number of years. It is a major issue we have looked at. We have made some significant recommendations which I hope will be taken up by any future government.

I would like to thank other members on the committee for this long walk with the prison. Mr Hargreaves, in particular, has taken quite an interest in the prison, and I am sure he will have something to say about it. I would also like to thank our secretary, Fiona, for the great job she did in putting various reports together and harassing government, who were less than prompt in providing information. As I receive a glare from Mr Moore, I must say that under the new minister that has not been the case. It has been a worthwhile look at the prison. Should we go ahead with a prison, I hope that we get a good one. I also hope that all the recommendations are looked at seriously by any future government.

MR HARGREAVES (11.37): I echo Mr Osborne's congratulation of our committee secretary, who has been extremely helpful in interpreting the differing views on the committee and putting them together in a form we could submit to this Assembly after Mr Kaine had edited it properly. Mr Kaine's attention to the detail of the English was most helpful. I express my appreciation also to Mr Hird, because he shifted a lot of ground in the course of the inquiry, which I know was difficult for him.

This is the final report for this Assembly, but if whichever government is formed next year picks up the recommendations of this committee they will continue the undertaking Mr Humphries gave that the Assembly will have a watchdog role over the prison through its construction phase and on into its operation. I would like to add my encouragement on that.

The committee recommends at recommendation 2 that the government provide a detailed response to the prison community panel's report Getting it Right. I would like to recognise in the gallery Mr Don Allan, who had a lot to do with keeping the panel report alive and giving us a good idea of just how much consistency there was in the approach in the Getting it Right report. It was portrayed that it was a less than significant majority, and we had that corrected.

I would like to put on the record my appreciation of the community panel for their involvement in the process. It has been most useful.

What has been interesting has been the convergence of views. The committee, for example, was not happy with private ownership. Neither was the panel. The government realised that this was a community view and embraced the public ownership bit. I think a lot of the credit for that can go to the community panel.

It is a bit disappointing that the government has not tabled in this Assembly a detailed response to the Getting it Right report. We have seen some of the government's reactions to it, but it would have been nice to have had a record of the government's attitude to that report.

As Mr Osborne said, we would like to see the panel monitoring role continue when the prison is up and running. Certainly it would need to be a revised committee model, because it is a little bit unwieldy at the moment. It was important that every sector of the

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