Page 92 - Week 01 - Tuesday, 9 February 2010
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I think that it is now clear to everybody in the ACT community that this is a project that has been poorly handled. There were the delays of about 18 months in the opening that caused the human rights breaches or exacerbated the human rights breaches at the Belconnen Remand Centre; the sham opening on the eve of the election; and the fact that the prison was delayed—was delivered under scope. People will recall that the gym that was meant to be in the prison was not there, the chapel that was meant to be in the prison was not there, and the outer perimeter fence that they wanted was not there. There were meant to be 375 beds, but there were only 300. There were meant to be 60 transition beds, but there were only 15. There was meant to be artwork, but it was a problem and had to be redone.
I will continue with some of the failures. The RFID was delivered late, and we have already had three of the items lost. Sadly, we have already had a death in custody, and that is the subject of a coronial inquest. We have had problems with the administration of medication. We have had razor blades, drugs and needles already found within the Alexander Maconochie Centre. We have had problems with internet access, with breaches of the internet system where media outlets were sent emails. We have remandees on child sex offence cases being given access to the web.
And we have cost blow-outs. We know that the prison is now costing us $504 a day per prisoner, yet the Chief Minister, a few years prior to the jail being opened, guaranteed the people of Canberra that it would not cost us any more. That simply was not true. We are now paying for our prisoners almost double the amount we did prior to the jail being open.
There are two things that the Labor government is doing. One is saying, “Well, it’s all human rights.” It’s human rights this; it’s human rights that. We obviously all want to make sure that we rehabilitate our prisoners. We want to make sure that they come back integrated into normal life. You and I, Mr Assistant Speaker Hargreaves, have had many conversations about this over our time. But hiding behind human rights is not an excuse for poor management; it is not an excuse for failing to deliver a project on time, on scope, on budget. Human rights is something that we would want to see addressed in the jail, but when we have razor blades there, when we have drugs inside there and when we have the failure of management that we see, that does not necessarily make this a human rights compliant facility.
The second point that the government makes is: “You know, the Liberals didn’t want this jail; they never supported it.” If you track back in history—Mr Corbell was in this place back in 2001 when the Labor government took office—you will know that the concept for a jail in the ACT was being led at that stage by the ACT Liberal government, and the concerns that were being raised by the then Labor opposition were ones around the costs, to make sure that, if a jail were delivered, it would be done in a cost-effective manner. The rhetoric of Labor in opposition demanding that the costs to be met be no more than the current price of sending prisoners to New South Wales has been abandoned by this government, which is now delivering a prison that is well over cost.
In summary, let me say that I am very disappointed by Mr Corbell’s response. I fail to see why he demanded so much media attention for his speech. It was a limp response.
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