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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2002 Week 9 Hansard (21 August) . . Page.. 2713 ..

Amendments agreed to.

Clause 14, as amended, agreed to.

Clauses 15 to 34, by leave, taken together and agreed to.

Proposed new part 9A.

MR STANHOPE (Chief Minister, Attorney-General, Minister for Health, Minister for Community Affairs and Minister for Women) (5.01): Mr Deputy Speaker, I move amendment No 4 circulated in my name, which inserts a new part 9A [see schedule 1 at page 2721].

This part seeks to amend the Periodic Detention Act 1995 by providing that when a place is both a remand centre and a detention centre, the Periodic Detention Act applies only to detainees and applies in relation to the place only to the extent that it is used as a detention centre. Together with the amendments to the Remand Centres Act 1976, this means that detainees are governed by the PDA and remandees are governed by the RCA, even when they are housed in the same building.

As a matter of policy, it is recognised that detainees and remandees should be kept separate wherever possible. Accordingly, the Director of Corrective Services must ensure that detainees are held at a centre with both remand and detention purposes only if a centre dedicated solely to detainees is not available.

Mr Deputy Speaker, I am aware-and Mr Stefaniak alluded to this earlier today in discussions with me in my office-that there are some real issues in relation to this proposal, and I might just give some background.

At 5.00 pm, in accordance with standing order 34, the debate was interrupted. The motion for the adjournment of the Assembly having been put and negatived, the debate was resumed.

MR STANHOPE: Mr Deputy Speaker, I will go to some of the background issues in relation to these amendments, because I am aware of Mr Stefaniak's and the opposition's views. The Periodic Detention Centre has a maximum capacity of 30 people. Based on average attendance figures from the preceding 18 months, this capacity should usually be sufficient to cope with demand. At least 30 detainees have attended each weekend since the PDC opened.

The increase is actually quite difficult to explain, as the average weekly number of people subject to periodic detention orders has actually decreased from 2000-01 to 2001-02, and also the percentage of these people presenting for detention each weekend has, on average, decreased slightly over this time. So it is difficult in that context to say how often detainees would need to be held in a remand centre. The Periodic Detention Act allows detainees to be granted leave of absence and to miss up to two consecutive weekends of detention. This makes it difficult to accurately estimate the number of people who will attend on any given weekend.

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