Page 2787 - Week 08 - Thursday, 24 August 2006

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Turning to the issues in relation to the DPP, we are very pleased to be funding additional staffing for the DPP. We do need those additional staff to improve the capacity and the overall capability of the DPP to successfully prosecute. There is no doubt in my mind that it is an important public policy imperative that people who are charged with offences are able to be effectively prosecuted to ensure that justice is done. That is what we are attempting to do through that process.

The only other point I would make in conclusion is that I note that members of the opposition are still failing to address the remand centre issue. Clearly they need to go and look at the remand centre and see exactly the condition of that facility. It is not an acceptable facility in anyone’s imagination. There are probably better facilities in some Third World countries, to be quite frank. It is not acceptable for a jurisdiction such as the ACT, when it takes responsibility for the custody of somebody who has been deprived of their liberty, to put them in such a facility. Mr Speaker, this is an important budget line item and we certainly will not be supporting the amendment moved by Mr Stefaniak.

Question put:

That Mr Stefaniak’s amendment be agreed to.

The Assembly voted—

Question so resolved in the negative.

Proposed expenditure agreed to.

Proposed expenditure—Part 1.16—Department of Education and Training, $409,115,000 (net cost of outputs), $59,884,000 (capital injection) and $166,028,000 (payments on behalf of the Territory), totalling $635,017,000.

MRS DUNNE (Ginninderra) (2.13 am): I move the amendment circulated in my name.

MR SPEAKER: Order! Standing order 201 states that a member other than a minister may not move an amendment to a money proposal. You have moved it in the wrong place, Mrs Dunne, anyway.

MRS DUNNE: Yes, I have. I am sorry, Mr Speaker. The Liberal opposition is opposing this line of the budget on the now well-publicised basis that the central plank of this government’s education budget relates to a proposal to close 39 schools and to amalgamate and make changes to almost every other school in the ACT. When you go through the list of schools, by the time you add together the closures, the amalgamations, the reconfigurings of every possible complexion, by my calculations about 10 per cent of

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