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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 06 Hansard (Tuesday, 22 June 2004) . . Page.. 2262 ..

Think of the woman whose partner is arrested by police for crimes of misbehaviour with children. How confused must she be? How emotionally destroyed must she be? How can she tell the children? How does she put food on the table if he is the breadwinner? How does she pay the rent? When the media expose the name of the offender, how do the children cope at school? Who will help that family? Who will make sure that the family does not disintegrate?

When the offender has completed his sentence, who prepares the partner for the emotional and physical issues around the re-establishment of a domestic relationship? Who prepares a young child for the re-entry of a parent into the household? In some cases a child has matured into a young adult during the period of incarceration and the emotional upheaval is immense. Society needs a cultural change; it needs an attitudinal change. Now is the time for the ACT to lead the country; now is the time to lead attitudinal change. We must act now because the need is now and will only increase when our prison comes online.

I have not tabled extracts of the minutes for this report, as this is the first report of two for this inquiry. When the second report is tabled—and it will address issues surrounding Quamby—that will conclude this inquiry and the extracts of minutes will then be tabled. I commend the report to the Assembly.

MS DUNDAS (10.43): I rise to thank members of the community for participating in this investigation, members of the Assembly and, of course, the chair for his participation in looking at this issue. I believe we have put forward a report that should not be seen as groundbreaking in what we are discussing, but it is groundbreaking in the fact that this is something that is rarely discussed.

We are looking at the families of offenders and what they experience when part of their family goes through the criminal justice system. We often focus on what happens to prisoners and the people who are arrested; and we often focus on what happens to the victims of crime; but families are often left out of the loop. This report brings forward that discussion. I hope it generates debate and movement so we do support the families who, on their own, have committed no crime yet are punished by this society, by the community, and forced to live in quite difficult situations.

The committee, as the chair has detailed, went into a lot of detail in focusing on what is happening currently in the ACT, the support that is available, if any, and also what is happening around Australia. As the chair has done, I commend this report to the Assembly in looking at the Outcare model in Western Australia and how we could possibly use that model here in the ACT to establish a specific support service to help families in their time of most need, when one of their own is incarcerated.

Besides the Outcare model and how it would work if a prison is established in the ACT, this report goes into a great deal of detail about recommendations and things that need to be done now. We have prisoners today who have been taken away from families in the ACT. They are residing at the Belconnen Remand Centre, at Symonston, in Quamby and in jails throughout New South Wales. Their families and children remain here in the ACT and they need support. This is the core of the report.

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