Page 373 - Week 02 - Tuesday, 7 March 2006
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Yes, I am aware, and it is a pity that the chamber of commerce, an organisation that purports to represent business in the ACT, purports to be there to advance commerce, would not engage in the preparation of the single most important strategic document, the economic white paper, ever produced in the ACT and does not believe that there is any benefit in the construction of a $128 million piece of significant infrastructure, with ongoing utility now and into the future. It is quite remarkable that a business representative would talk down a $128 million government public works project and all that that entails. It is quite amazing not only in the context of budgeting and what is or is not a waste of money.
It might be interesting in the months ahead, as events unravel in relation to the finances of the chamber of commerce, for us to reflect on Mr Peters’s capacity as a budget manager when we get to have revealed to us in some more detail exactly how the old chamber is travelling in terms of its budget. To hear Mr Peters pontificating on what is a waste of money and what represents good budgeting might make some interesting copy in weeks and months to come. Yes, I think that it might make some interesting copy in weeks and months to come.
Of course, the prison is not just about dollars and cents, it is not just about the economy and it is not just about commerce. But, in the context of the chief executive of a commerce-driven organisation, one would have thought that the other issues, the other great benefits, of having our own corrections facility, our own prison, the Alexander Maconochie Centre—the social benefits, the social aspects and indeed the other benefits which are hard sometimes to quantify—might have been upmost, at least in the context of an organisation that one might have hoped would show some compassion, some foresight and some capacity to think laterally about costs and benefits in relation to a reduction in recidivism, an increase in rehabilitation and a reduction in crime.
Of great importance to the opposition today were issues around a reduction in crime. We will not see reductions in crime if we do not deal with some of those other aspects of institutionalisation and corrections around rehabilitation. Even if the chamber was not interested in those aspects, one would have thought it would have paid a bit more attention to the benefit to the community economically of the prison.
MR SPEAKER: Order! The minister’s time has expired.
MR GENTLEMAN: Chief Minister, what work has the government done to assess the benefits of commissioning the territory’s own corrections facility? Can you tell the Assembly what this analysis has revealed?
MR STANHOPE: The government, quite obviously, has done significant work on an assessment of the benefits of the prison. I was touching on some of the social benefits, some of the benefits of a reduction in recidivism and some of the benefits of a return to society of functioning, participating members whose lives had perhaps been shaped by their institutionalisation, and the enormous benefit which a rehabilitated and functioning individual might be in terms of future benefit in a whole range of ways to the community. It is not just that a rehabilitated prisoner is a prisoner who won’t re-offend, but a rehabilitated prisoner, of course, is somebody who can take their useful place in
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