Page 1599 - Week 05 - Thursday, 8 May 2008
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the opportunity to talk to the government. Community agencies, government, businesses and members of the public were consulted. A further 32 submissions were received from the community, government, legal and oversight agencies. In addition to this, I tabled all three of the key findings from the consultations in the ACT Legislative Assembly in February 2006, December 2006 and August 2007.
In addition to the three stages of consultation, in August 2003 the Standing Committee on Community Services and Social Equity released the inquiry into the rights, interests and wellbeing of children and young people, and all of these have had an impact on the bill. In May 2004, the Commissioner for Public Administration released what we know as the Varden report. In June 2004, the Standing Committee on Community Services and Social Equity released its report, The forgotten victims of crime: families of offenders and their silent sentence.
In July 2004, the Commissioner for Public Administration released the report The territory’s children: ensuring safety and quality care for children and young people. In August 2004, the government released The right system for rights protection. In August 2004, the Standing Committee on Community Services and Social Equity released One way roads out of Quamby: transition options for young people exiting juvenile detection in the ACT. In June 2005, the Human Rights and Discrimination Commissioner released her report on the human rights audit on the Quamby Youth Detention Centre.
This is the amount of consultation that has gone on into this bill. If the opposition do not feel that the consultation process is good enough, undertake your own consultation, by all means. But this Assembly and this government have undertaken extensive consultation. I have spoken with a number of community organisations this morning, none of whom want this referred to a standing committee. They all want us to get on with the job with this legislation—debate it, amend it, but, in the end, we need to pass it.
Bimberi youth detention centre will be open in late September this year. We need this legislation to provide the framework for the operation of that centre. It is critical that we get down and deal with the bill as it stands now. There is no need for it to go to the standing committee. As I said, if the opposition want to undertake their consultations with the community because they are concerned that there are things that have not been looked at, by all means, go ahead. But the government will be moving to debate this bill.
We hope to have debate commence in June. I am not sure it will be able to be finished. I am happy for any officer that the opposition wants to speak to in relation to this bill to be made available for the length of time that the opposition seeks, however extensive that may be, in order to move this forward. It is unrealistic to expect that a referral to the standing committee will be able to deliver a report in August. Then what? We can get on and debate it? I do not think so. We then have to respond to a report, and we will not get this done.
I know this is probably the Liberals’ way of declaring their own official caretaker—that is, that we are in caretaker mode under the Liberal’s point of view now, therefore
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