Page 3695 - Week 10 - Wednesday, 26 August 2009
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MR HARGREAVES: Mr Speaker, in attempting to answer the question, let me say that when our people were released from the New South Wales prison system they were waved goodbye at the gate with no follow-up service. I am not going to offer that same service to New South Wales in return. I am going to make sure that the service available to people on release and their families is going to maximise the amount of time they can stay out of the system. We have not had our programs that do that in the ACT for long enough to evaluate them, and I said that I would not even contemplate it inside 12 months. That is going to be the answer.
Mr Hanson: You wouldn’t even negotiate. You wouldn’t even start the negotiations.
MR HARGREAVES: I will just sit down now and wait for the supplementary. Then I will do you again.
MR SPEAKER: A supplementary question, Mr Hanson?
MR HANSON: Thank you, Mr Speaker. Minister, given that in 2001 you said that the ACT had squandered an opportunity to negotiate with New South Wales on the issue and your government has now had over eight years to negotiate on this issue, have you squandered an opportunity?
MR HARGREAVES: I actually have to correct what Mr Hanson says about what I said in 2001. Around the same time I was talking about the proposed prison I was, in fact, fighting the Liberal Party’s proposal to have a privately owned and privately run prison in this town. I was fighting the proposal that was going on with this lot to have a privately owned and privately run prison in this town. In fact, you can go back and have a look at the previous planning committee meetings—
Mr Hanson: The government was going to spend $110 million.
MR HARGREAVES: Well, now, you see, Mr Hanson puts up a page from the Canberra Times as the gospel according to St Jeremy. But, do you know, Mr Speaker, that there are more authorities and references he could have used. The Standing Committee on Justice and Community Safety is a more definitive reference, and I suggest that Mr Hanson stop being lazy, stop looking up his Canberra Times bible and check it out. All those opposite were going to do in those days was to pick up the same system that applied in New South Wales and applied here.
Mr Smyth: Absolutely not.
MR HARGREAVES: Absolutely not?
Mr Smyth: Absolutely not.
MR HARGREAVES: Mr Smyth says absolutely not, because he is the guy that was not going to have it at all anyway. He was going to take the $100 million—capital, mind you—and apply it to recurrent costs to improve our health system. That was a clever move from you, Mr Smyth. Budgeting 101, mate. Fail, fail, fail! You got
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