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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2002 Week 10 Hansard (29 August) . . Page.. 3060 ..

MR STEFANIAK (continuing):

would probably get its money back in about 25 years if it took that action. And you would have government agencies in a building owned by the government and not paying rent. That is not a bad option. On a positive note, the Chief Minister is now actively looking at that and has certainly changed his dogmatic stance of last year.

I have some concerns about figures in relation to the response of the government to the Estimates Committee relating to savings. In the JACS Department there is a saving of $35,000 in policy advice, which may well be achievable; in output class 2-justice and legal services-there is a saving of $309,000; and in output class 3-regulatory services-there is a saving of $61,000. I will leave it to my colleague Mr Smyth to comment on that and Mrs Dunne to comment on emergency management and correction services.

The saving of $309,000 in justice and legal services worried me. We managed to put in some extra money for the Government Solicitor's Office last year. The range, detail and complexity of work is ever growing for the JACS Department, and it was necessary to put in some extra money last year. For the Government Solicitor's alone it was $250,000.

In what is a fairly small department, with the rent I have mentioned but not a huge amount of people, I am worried that a reduction of $309,000 to justice and legal services might be difficult to achieve and the government might find difficulties. I would be interested to see what services would be cut there. That could be quite worrying. We found that the justice department needed an injection of money-which we were able to give last year when our budget was in the black and much healthier-rather than a reduction. I will watch that one with interest.

I will make some comments on another matter my committee has a watching brief over: the prison and the remand centre. Whilst I am pleased to see some steps taken on an interim basis in relation to housing the remandees, it is crucially important that this government stop its shillyshallying and dillydallying around and bite the bullet in relation to a prison for the ACT. It is part of our looking after ourselves, and it is crucial that we take responsibility for our own prisoners.

It is important, firstly, that courts not have to worry about what is going to happen in New South Wales-because they have no control over it-secondly, that prisoners who should be sentenced to a term of imprisonment are actually sentenced to a term of imprisonment and, thirdly, that when they are sentenced to a term of imprisonment, we have control over rehabilitation programs and what happens to prisoners inside a prison.

As you know, I was involved in these courts-not so much recently-until late 1988 as a prosecutor and then working briefly in private practice until the First Assembly. Then in the Second Assembly for a lot of the time I was back in private practice. From the time I started practising here, it was often said by magistrates and judges that they had great concerns about sentencing prisoners out of the ACT. Some of them used it as an excuse not to sentence someone to imprisonment. I do not accept that as an excuse. I think someone who is sentenced to jail should go to jail, but I do have sympathy for the fact that there was no way that they could enforce any order they made.

MR SPEAKER: The member's time has expired.

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