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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2002 Week 10 Hansard (29 August) . . Page.. 3067 ..

MR SMYTH (continuing):

I want Treasury involved, but I have given a series of instructions and if they represent terms of reference, then they have got terms of reference. Have I written them down and posted them on a wall? No, I haven't. I have given instructions as to what I want and you can judge the end product by what comes out of that process.

It is a very interesting process for a government that was so process orientated in the lead-up to the election to actually outline what it does. Programs first, prison design second, site selection third. And have we got any of that? I do not believe so. I do not believe we have a government that is interested in building a prison at all, because what we see is the government fitting things to what suits it.

We had a report from Rengain that said a stand-alone remand centre-the worst option, in the experts' opinion-would cost $61 million. Mr Quinlan's conclusion-and the reason was to get some financial rigour into it-was that we could afford to build this for $50 million. Let's look at this against what Labor stated under the term "ACT prison":

Labor will not be rushed into the building of an ACT prison, but it is committed to building one. Labor is committed to a state-of-the-art prison which encompasses appropriate behaviour modification programs which is empathetic to the special needs of women and which embraces an assistance program for people with substance dependence.

So where are the programs? What is a state-of-the-art prison, and how much of the state-of-the-art has just gone out the door with an $11 million drop in the amount of estimated expenditure for the remand centre?

We have a merry-go-round of obfuscation. It is certainly not the honest, transparent and open government it said it would be; it is a secretive government that is not revealing programs or showing us what the design is. It certainly won't tell people what the list of sites is because-goodness me-somebody may make politics out of them. Is this the way we are going to get a state-of-the-art rehabilitation system for our prisoners? I think not.

One of the concerns with corrections is to meet the health needs of remandees and prisoners. Ms Tucker made some points about that. We know that the budget for the current Belconnen Remand Centre for health needs is contained inside the health department. But there is no mention of how they will cope with having a split campus and provide services to both of the sites. Recommendation 42 reads:

The Committee recommends that the Government explain how the health needs of remandees housed in the temporary Symonston facility will be met.

The government response reads:

Health services for all remandees are the responsibility of the Department of Health and Community Care and those services will be provided as required at the STRC as well as at the BRC. The STRC will have the necessary facilities for the provision of health and related services.

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