Page 1342 - Week 05 - Thursday, 31 May 2007
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have contributed to this debate have raised this evening and I will seek to address a number of those in my comments in closing debate on this bill.
I would like to address concerns that have been raised in the community health sector. ACTCOSS and others have expressed concerns about the provisions regarding detainees’ right to healthcare and the appointment of doctors for each corrections centre. The concern was that the provisions intended to create a type of healthcare which was divorced from the ACT’s mainstream health services.
The international documents on healthcare in prisons established two clear principles. Firstly, those accountable for administrating prisons are responsible for ensuring that detainees receive healthcare equivalent to the healthcare available to the community as a whole and, secondly, doctors and other people providing therapeutic services cannot be involved in any custodial matters that are not directly therapeutic. There is also a human rights standard that emphasises that prison medical services should not be isolated from a community’s normal healthcare system. The United Nations standard minimum rules for the treatment of prisoners states that medical services should be organised in close relationship to the general health administration of the community or nation.
The government supports this concept, and I would like to take the opportunity to say that the Corrections Management Bill enables doctors, nurses and other health professionals to act as they normally would in any other setting. The AMC will have its own community health centre to service two distinct functions. One will be a 10-bed crisis support unit to provide a place where prisoners at a heightened risk of suicide and self-harm can receive additional support and treatment. The other function will be three lots of two-bed wards providing for specialist non-emergency medical treatment and clinical areas servicing psychiatric, dental and general medical care. Prisoners who need emergency medical services will be escorted securely to public hospitals within Canberra and will be treated while still in the custody of escorting custodial officers.
The bill also ensures that there is one doctor appointed for each corrections facility in the ACT. This doctor has the statutory responsibility for the overall provision of health services, including the prevention of disease. But this statutory doctor is not the only doctor or health professional that will be providing services to prisoners. To leave no doubt as to the doctor’s independence, I am foreshadowing a government amendment during the detail stage of the bill that changes the responsibility of appointing a therapeutic doctor from the Chief Executive of the Department of Justice and Community Safety to the Chief Executive of ACT Health. The amendment emphasises that the doctor should be perceived to be part of the territory’s health system like any other doctor.
A number of other issues have been raised in the debate this evening as well. The first is in relation to the provision for strict liability offences. The government provided a detailed reply to the matters raised by the scrutiny of bills committee prior to the debate this evening, but for the benefit of the debate I would like to reiterate what the government said in relation to the commentary on strict liability offences.
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