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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2002 Week 13 Hansard (19 November) . . Page.. 3775 ..

MR QUINLAN (continuing):

I have expressed the view today that I ought to have known if we were still sending prisoners out of the ACT, even though we had spent considerable resources setting up a 30-bed annexe. That is in light of the fact that our numbers had gone over 90. I think 94 is the high in recent times. We should have been able to cater for most, if not all, of those prisoners. At 94, we may not have been able to cater for all of the women, if we wanted to maintain appropriate separations.

I will not try to pretend that I am an expert in the detail. I have had discussions with the Minister for Health, the Chief Minister, and we are working actively to make sure that the necessary services at the Symonston temporary remand centre will be provided. As we go through the commissioning process-and I do not guarantee that that is going to happen tomorrow, and I do not guarantee that that is going to happen next Monday-we will solve this glitch and we will optimise the use of the Symonston temporary remand centre. When we have invested taxpayers' money in it, we do not want to be paying for the housing of remandees outside of Canberra.

I hope that satisfies the question that was asked. I will try to get as much of that information as possible into the media. I gather the media was probably advised before question time, tactically-and I respect the tactics. We were not to know until afterwards.

Question resolved in the affirmative.

The Assembly adjourned at 5.47 pm.

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