Page 5995 - Week 14 - Wednesday, 8 December 2010
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are raised that a certain segment of the staff are discriminated against because of their race, that is a serious allegation.
Ms Burch said, “I will give you a full assurance of our full support, that DHCS is right behind it.” DHCS has been in charge of it. I heard Mr Hargreaves say, or I think he said, “It is not quite a train wreck; it is off the rails.” If it is off the rails, minister, it is off the rails under your watch. We hear, “We will now make it happen.” We heard Ms Burch in question time say, “We need to change the culture.” Well, minister, it is your culture. The place is 20 months old. It has been open for 20 months, and here we are, 20 months after the opening of a brand-new institution, and the government is now questioning the culture that it let establish itself in that place.
This needs to be an independent inquiry. It needs to be such that it does not happen again. If, as Ms Burch said, the new standard is that you have to have a death—the seriousness of it seems to be “let’s have a death before we have this sort of inquiry”—then I am very concerned about the minister’s approach to this and the seriousness with which she is taking it.
Yesterday we asked questions about “did you call them little buggers?”—of various degrees. We asked, “Did you cover your ears and say, ‘La, la, la’?” We asked, “Were you there simply to cover your backside because you did not know about Bimberi?” Chief Minister, what it shows is a minister who is not in control and pays no attention to a very important part of her portfolio—which your government rightly has put money into, to establish a new facility because the old facilities were inadequate. To set it up to fail in this way and then not have due regard to a process to fix it is just ridiculous.
Ms Hunter says, “This is a better way.” I do not think she gave us a reason as to why it is a better way. I did not hear a single word that said that the youth advocate had more power, more staff, more resources, more ability, more protection or anything that would sell that position as the position that would do this job any better. The real question then is this: does the commissioner have the power? I know Mrs Dunne has spoken to him. She can relay that conversation. What is at the heart of this is the ability to do the job properly. The only way is to do this job properly so that there is not a death. If there is a death in custody in Bimberi, it will be on the head of the Greens and the Labor Party for not taking the appropriate steps today—taking the appropriate steps today and saying, “This is a truly serious issue.”
This is about young people that we have incarcerated; it is about the vulnerable. But it is also about the staff and it is also about all of their families, who expect one day to have the young ones come home and, at the end of the shift, have the workers come home—not damaged, not stressed, not beaten, not spat upon, not abused, not discriminated against.
That is why this should be independent. That is why, if we are truly going to change the culture, the only way to do that is not to have it run through the system but to have it run totally and absolutely independently. That is why we will not be supporting Ms Hunter’s amendments. We will be supporting Mrs Dunne’s amendment. It is appropriate to do this through a board of inquiry in accordance with the Inquiries Act 1991. It is appropriate that we get it right.
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