Page 1672 - Week 05 - Tuesday, 4 May 2010
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rape whilst under custody of the ACT government. The allegation is that he has been allowed to rape some young remandee again. If Mr Corbell and Mr Stanhope think that is a joke, it is quite clear why we have so many problems occurring in our corrections system. If that is what we set as our leadership, if that is the ministerial tone that is being set—we laugh at things or we are just simply dismissive and say, “Well, that happens in jails; you can’t hold us to account for that”—then that is an absolute disgrace—
Mr Smyth: Total abrogation.
MR HANSON: Yes, it is an abrogation of responsibility.
The only thing we have heard from the government is to go back 10 years and to say, “We had a different policy to you back then.” It was a Liberal-inspired idea to have a jail here in the ACT, and there was a difference in approach. It was certainly Liberal Party policy to go forward to have a jail here in the ACT, and it would have been run by a private organisation. There was a difference of approach, and by 2004 we had said, “Let’s put that money into hospitals, because we don’t trust the ability of the ACT government, the Labor government, to run this prison.” If you went out there into the community, Madam Deputy Speaker, and said, “Would you like $130 million put into our hospital system? Would you like the vast amounts of money being spent on our prisoners to maintain them here in the ACT—$500 a day—spent on our health system or would you like it spent on a jail that is providing none of what is promised?” you would get a very clear answer from the community.
We have heard a lot of promises and we have heard a lot of the rhetoric coming forward from the government about how good it is going to be, how great it is going to be. If it is so good, why are the prisoners protesting on the roof? If it is such a human rights compliant prison, if it is delivering all the programs that they want, if they are having such a good time in there about being rehabilitated, why are they protesting on the roof? I do not get it. If the corrections staff are so happy with the way it is being run, why is it that they are supporting those protesters? Why are they going to their union?
Let me assure you, Madam Deputy Speaker, that what we have heard here today is just the tip of the iceberg. I have had prison officers, corrections officers, come to me and sit in my office and tell me about the problems out there, in desperation at the failure of this government to do anything. I have had prisoners’ families come to me in desperation about what is going on there. If you think that these are isolated incidents, teething problems, they are not. What you have here is systemic failure, and you have a government, a Chief Minister, who is refusing to make sure his minister does the right job. You have a minister in Simon Corbell who has been proven to be absolutely incapable of running this jail.
As much as the government like to skew it that way, this is not a policy debate. The policy is set. We have a jail. It is now about running it effectively and efficiently and managing the jail so that rehabilitation occurs and so that recidivism rates in the ACT are reduced. It is about making sure it is not costing ACT taxpayers a fortune—money that they could otherwise be spending on their families or money we could otherwise
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