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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2002 Week 6 Hansard (15 May) . . Page.. 1649 ..

MR STANHOPE (continuing):

Mr Smyth's government had the lowest per capita expenditure on mental health of any state or territory. That is what the record shows: a government that failed explicitly. That is why we are keeping to our commitment of an additional $1 million for mental health. It is not a question of spruiking or empty rhetoric: we are doing it, we are committing, and we are going to deliver.

This new approach of Mr Smyth, the time-out facility, dangerously ignores-this is another major failing of the last government-the extent to which it ignored what was going on at the Belconnen Remand Centre. To some extent this debate is as much about the Belconnen Remand Centre as it is about an additional facility for people with a mental condition or illness. It is about the Belconnen Remand Centre because it is so dangerously run down and overcrowded that no government that takes seriously its duty of care to people who are incarcerated can possibly allow the circumstances that we find at the Belconnen Remand Centre to persist. That is the blunt truth of this matter.

The advice that this government has had from its officials and advisers on the Belconnen Remand Centre is that it is unconscionable to continue with the centre as it is and that it needs urgent attention. We do not want to commit funds to the Belconnen Remand Centre as a temporary or band-aid measure. We are advised by our officers-just as we know you were advised-that it is unconscionable to leave that place in the state that it is in. Any government that does nothing cannot pretend that it is meeting its duty of care to people we incarcerate, even as remandees. Those are the circumstances we find ourselves in; that is the environment we are in.

We were faced with unambiguous, direct advice, from the head of the department of justice, that you have no option. A government that does not move on this issue is a government that cannot stand here and claim to have met its duties and responsibilities. You left us no option. After seven years of neglect at the Belconnen Remand Centre, you left us with no option. You left us no room in which to move. We simply have to respond to what we find at the Belconnen Remand Centre. You cannot talk about putting a fence up around the periodic detention centre as some sort of band-aid. It is a critical response.

Mr Smyth: Your own minister said it.

MR STANHOPE: Yes, I regret that we have got to use $3 million in a less than efficient way to resolve a problem that you left us. I am happy for Mr Keady to come to estimates and to talk chapter and verse about the Belconnen Remand Centre. I am happy for the head of corrections to come and talk about the Belconnen Remand Centre and how untenable the situation is there. So do not confuse these two issues. We have no option but to do what we are doing in relation to the Belconnen Remand Centre. You left us no option. You left it so late.

Mr Smyth: You stymied our attempts to build the new facilities.

MR STANHOPE: Your band-aid measures at the Belconnen Remand Centre-

Mr Smyth: You are politicking.

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