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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 06 Hansard (Tuesday, 22 June 2004) . . Page.. 2268 ..

because the bill has been languishing—my bill has been waiting for seven months now; maybe I will just bring it on. But we have not seen the government’s reform package.

We have promises, as we always do from the Chief Minister. I quote again. He said, “As I say, this will be done in a couple of months’ time.” It is now seven months time. We have got a report from a committee—a very good report—that really does look at leading the country. The chair and his members are to be congratulated on this. We are not getting the leadership from the Chief Minister that would allow corrections reform to go ahead in this place. Maybe the Chief Minister will come down and tell us when he intends to table his bill or what his definition of “a couple of months time is”—or maybe he just forgot.

MS TUCKER (11.08): I would like to make a brief comment to remind members that the health committee produced a report on the provision of clean injecting equipment for people who are incarcerated, in remand centres, prisons or youth detention centres. I think the work of the health committee links very clearly to the work of this committee.

If you are concerned about the families of people who are incarcerated, you obviously want to make sure that they do not come out of prison with HIV/AIDS or hepatitis. I note that in the report there is a recommendation that deals with preventative health care for people while they are in the care of the state. I want to remind members that there has been a full report produced on that very important aspect of the health of people who are in prison, remand centres or juvenile detention centres.

MR QUINLAN (Treasurer, Minister for Economic Development, Business and Tourism and Minister for Sport, Racing and Gaming) (11.09): Very briefly, I would like to congratulate the members of the committee for their report—in particular Mr Hargreaves, who happened to be our spokesman for corrections in the framing of our policy. His contribution to this report is obvious.

MR HARGREAVES (11.09): I do not wish to close the debate. I seek leave to speak again because I missed out on thanking a few people.

Leave granted.

MR HARGREAVES: I apologise to members for not doing this originally. I wish to express for the record my appreciation to the witnesses who came before the committee. It was a very difficult thing for them to do, and some of them wore their hearts on their sleeves. I want to thank the interstate agencies, who received us warmly and were quite open in the way in which they revealed their systems—warts and all—particularly the people at Goulburn. It was not a pleasant exercise for the committee to undergo.

The families of prisoners also need a special mention in the Hansard. They opened the eyes of our committee quite significantly. I want to thank the prisoners we spoke to, who gave us their contributions and, of course, prison officials. Notably, I want to thank the Outcare workers in Western Australia for opening the eyes of the committee to the way in which we could do things.

I want to record my appreciation to my colleagues in particular. Some of the members on the committee had a change of view in the course of the inquiry. Indeed, as Mr Cornwell

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