Page 5904 - Week 14 - Wednesday, 8 December 2010
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video
pervades its structures. And we need to be plain about this. The area of youth justice
and rehabilitation is one of the most challenging that any government confronts. The young people involved in the youth justice system have some of the most complex and multiple needs and the most complex behavioural responses of any group in our society.
The safety and security of staff working at Bimberi, including those from the non-government sector, are of paramount importance to the government. But so too are the young Canberrans whom we are trying to help towards better lives. We must, as a community, ensure as great a degree of normalcy as possible for young people in care. That is a genuine challenge at every step. How does one make a security facility seem as much like the outside world as possible?
One way is by continuing those aspects of life that are part of the common experience of all young people. Education is one of those things and keeping young people in care engaged with the educational system is obviously a priority. It is pleasing that 100 per cent of young people in detention in the ACT were involved in an accredited educational training program, from our most recent statistics, as were 100 per cent of those older than school age.
It is perhaps timely, after two years of operation, to examine how well Bimberi is going. But Mrs Dunne proposes a board of inquiry under the Inquiries Act 1991 and we, in the government, do not believe that that is the best way to proceed. It is a needlessly adversarial and intimidating quasi-judicial response to what may turn out to be organisational issues.
You could argue that the openness and frankness that will be needed to identify the real issues that have led to recent complaints are less likely to be obtained in a coercive setting like a board of inquiry. It would look at Bimberi in isolation when Bimberi and its operations are quite clearly just part of a continuum. It is most likely that hearings would be public and that confidentiality protection for witnesses would be extremely limited, again hardly conducive to openness and frankness. The mere process of satisfying all the legislative requirements, identifying suitable appointees, agreeing on remuneration and making the necessary administrative arrangements to support the work of a board of inquiry would almost certainly take months.
The alternative inquiry proposed by, as I understand it, the Greens convenor overcomes many of these problems. It recognises that Bimberi is part of a youth justice continuum. It is more proportionate to the scale of the problem. It can be up and running quickly and, importantly, it can run concurrently with the work that the minister, Ms Burch, is already doing to address the concerns raised by staff and young people.
To remind the chamber, the work that has already been initiated by the minister includes, most particularly, the appointment of Mr Daniel O’Neill to work intimately with management, staff and young people at Bimberi to tease out some of the cultural and organisational issues that have arisen and given concerns in recent times. Mr O’Neill will work closely with the residents and staff at Bimberi to identify and recommend to the minister, and to the government, opportunities for improving how we do things at Bimberi.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video