Page 2781 - Week 08 - Thursday, 24 August 2006
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prison does not appear to be necessary at this point in our history. It will not reduce the costs of remanding prisoners in the ACT.
Indeed, there are questions as to whether, in the search for better social development opportunities for prisoners, it will, in fact, cost more per prisoner. It will, however, without doubt cost the ACT taxpayers a significant amount of money to achieve the social goals of an ideologically driven government. I do not deny that social goals can be an important part of governance. However, I and many in the community and the opposition believe that there are greater issues of importance for the wider society that must take precedence at this time.
It is unfortunate the government has, as the Attorney-General said during estimates, decided to make the investment in the new facility. It is now important to minimise the cost of the government’s social policies for prisoners and ensure they do not have a negative effect on the rest of Canberra society by ensuring that both the construction of the new prison and its subsequent administration is handled efficiently if we are unsuccessful in deleting this item.
DR FOSKEY (Molonglo) (1.43 am): In April of this year, when the ministerial reshuffle occurred, Mr Corbell was given the potentially contradictory roles of Attorney-General and minister for police, an inappropriate combination, I believe, as in those roles he is overseeing both the safeguarding and the potential erosion of our civil liberties. This budget is the first test of how well he is juggling these responsibilities.
I have said before that I was interested to see in the review of the Human Rights Act comments about compatibility statements, which are really the primary way in which we see our Human Rights Act in action. I have asked many times and the scrutiny of bills committee has asked for the opportunity to see the reasoning that goes beyond those compatibility statements. That is something I will be following up from the review. If we are having a dialogue system of human rights, we need to have that dialogue. At the moment, the compatibility statements are black boxes.
The changes to the human rights commission are quite a disappointment and a reneging by the government on its promises. There has been a $1.6 million reduction in funding for the commission which is resulting, among other things, in a reduction in the number of commissioners from five to three. It looks like the health complaints commission is being relocated back to ACT Health and that the roles of the disability and community services commissioner and the children and young people’s commissioner have been combined.
It is disappointing that these changes have been made to the roles of both commissioners, particularly the children and young people’s commissioner, whose appointment was an election promise, was funded in the 2005-06 budget and was a recommendation of the Territory as parent report, as well as an ongoing recommendation of the Youth Coalition. I do think that this throws into doubt the government’s commitment to human right in practice as distinct from in theory.
Turning to gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and intersex issues, while the civil unions debate was progressing the Greens and two other groups, Good Process and A Gender Agenda, were highly concerned that this legislative process would end with the civil
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