Page 249 - Week 01 - Wednesday, 10 February 2010
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Mr Corbell: I was right, Jeremy.
MR HANSON: If you think that the fact you were right about the final outcome gives you the authority as the Attorney-General to express an opinion on issues that are before the court, you clearly do not understand your role as Attorney-General. If that is your position then you do not deserve to be the Attorney-General of this territory. If you think that the fact the court case ended up the same way as you thought it would gives you the right to comment then you are unfit to act as Attorney-General of this territory.
Mr Hargreaves, who is away at the moment—I think he has a pair—was passed a dreadful hospital pass from Mr Corbell. But he had a bit of an unfortunate period as well, trying to sort out Mr Corbell’s mess. He did not make a very good job of it, it is fair to say. He described the false opening of the AMC like a restaurant opening that he had been to. You will remember also that he described the violent incident that resulted in six corrections officers being treated in hospital as a scuffle that could have occurred at a Catholic seminary. He was rightly ridiculed in the media for those comments. But I have got no doubt that the hospital pass that he was given as a result of the bungling by Simon Corbell was a contributing factor that led to the demise of John Hargreaves as a minister in this Assembly.
I turn now to security breaches at the Alexander Maconochie Centre. Prior to it being opened, I wrote to John Hargreaves on 31 March 2009 and said to him, “Has there been any downgrading in the security specifications at the AMC to rush the commissioning?” And he said no. Sorry, that was when I spoke to him. But what we do know is that that was not true, because the SOTAR machine that should have been up and running would have prevented this, as he said in a budget debate in the Assembly. If the SOTAR machine had been up and running, it would have prevented it.
I had written to the minister earlier in March and had called for an independent assessment of the jail. I actually wrote to him, in good faith, urging him to conduct that assessment of the jail before receiving prisoners. And he told me no, that the AMC was safe, it was ready to open. But after such a short time, we know that the jail had needles, syringes and drugs in it and that, on any measure, it could not be considered safe. So it was not ready when we pushed ahead and put the prisoners in.
We have had issues with the RFID system. This is a system that is still not operational, I believe. Maybe the minister can clarify that issue. It is, the last I heard, being trialled. But we know that there were ID bracelets that were lost. I would have thought this would leave even Labor’s most ardent supporters embarrassed. These ID bracelets are designed to be on the prisoner to track the prisoner. So how it is that they were lost is unfathomable. Indeed, the prisoner who was honest enough to turn herself in and say, “I’ve still got a bracelet on me,” described the situation as a cock-up. And I think that is an apt description of what has occurred.
Turning to the report, Madam Deputy Speaker, that you would be well aware of, it is a damning result. For example, finding 23 refers to communication failures between
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