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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 13 Hansard (26 November) . . Page.. 4740 ..

MR HARGREAVES (continuing):

opposite. There is no justice in jacking up the sentences. There is no justice in filling up the prisons. There is no justice in extending the term of education in the university of criminality. Where is the justice in that? All you are doing is making sure you get a better standard of crook coming out. That is all you are doing. You are just going to create a better standard of crook out there on the streets by doing this.

Have you thought about how much it is going to cost us? Have you thought about the cost to the ACT taxpayer of the actual crimes that are committed here and the actual amount of money you are going to cost us? Well, let's have a look at it. You want to jack all these sentences up so people go to jail for the best part of their lives. Let's see you stick your hand in your pocket for the 75,000 bucks a year it is going to cost.

Where is the prison? You blokes did not even produce one. You could not do it. Why was that? Because you could not produce the goods to prove to anybody that it was going to work. You are just doing your mates a favour to build one so that people like you can fill them up.

You would not have the faintest idea about these issues. You trot out David Flint. How about trotting out some experts from the Institute of Criminology? How about trotting out experts from the United States, where over a million people are in the prisons? Zero tolerance is why.

You talk about Aboriginals. "These people commit more crimes."Why do you think that is? It is because people like you keep them crushed, and they have got no alternative. Do you provide them an opportunity to get on in the world? Short answer: no. Because people like you, when in power in the Northern Territory, put a kid in jail for three weeks for knocking off a set of pencils on his second offence. Mandatory sentencing: a teenager put in jail. Well, good on you.

How about you find out why it is and you try to fix that? You don't, because you can't. You are too blinded. You have to work it out. Let's take it out on the poor devil. Let's screw him to the wall. Do you know what his biggest crime in the Northern Territory was-and it was your mob that was in government there? The guy was black. That was what his biggest problem was.

MR SPEAKER: Order! Mr Hargreaves, please direct your comments through the chair. Members of the opposition will cease interjections.

MR HARGREAVES: I apologise to you, Mr Speaker. The problem over there is that they could not get away from the guy's colour. The treatment meted out to white kids in the Northern Territory and Darwin was completely different to that meted out to Aboriginal kids. There was no excuse for that at all. Good on Labor for just knocking it on the head the minute they came to power. These people make me ill. There is no sense in this.

Mr Pratt: Here you are, Mr Hargreaves.

MR HARGREAVES: Yes, okay. Mr Pratt is holding up a bucket. All I can suggest is that it is probably full of bile that he put in. He has such an abundance of bile that he does not know what to do with it, except share it amongst his colleagues.

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