Page 572 - Week 02 - Wednesday, 9 March 2011
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receive prisoners.” But they did not do that. The day before caretaker provisions came into effect, they opened this jail, and the minister responsible was Simon Corbell.
Moving to the capacity of the jail issue, I tried to censure Simon Corbell for this last year, but the Greens and Labor did not even allow the debate to occur. That has actually changed the forms of this place in that we are now doing these motions on Wednesday because of the Greens’ and Labor’s actions. And the Greens missed the point. The point is that the minister has been deliberately and wilfully misrepresenting the capacity of the jail as 300 and not as 245, and I will prove that to you today. The figure of 245 came to light—you were there, Mr Assistant Speaker Hargreaves—in the annual reports hearings last year and I questioned the figure at that time; it came after a dorothy dixer from you. Mr Corbell then said with regard to the figure:
I do not know why it is a surprise to you, Mr Hanson, because I do not think it is a surprise to anybody else.
Well, it certainly was a surprise to me and to everybody else I have spoken to, because the minister in May of last year had told me that the capacity—in fact the prisoner population that he planned—was 300. I said to him in the estimates hearings:
You planned on a prisoner population of up to 300, because that is how many beds you have got.
And Mr Corbell said:
Indeed.
So it was unequivocal. There was no talk then about operational capacity and moving people around. He said the prisoner population that was planned was 300 because that was how many beds he was going to have. He was unequivocal at that stage. No doubt I was surprised, because he had told me something completely different only a few months earlier. I have gone back and looked at what other ministers have said and what he had said previously that might have given rise to people being surprised. When he spoke to the Christians for an Ethical Society in March 2008, Corbell said:
It is built to accommodate up to 300 prisoners of all classifications …
Well, that is not true. It can accommodate up to 245. In a media release in October 2007 he said:
… the prison has capacity for 190 sentenced prisoners, 110 remandees …
Well, that is not true. It has got capacity for 245. A media release from the day it was opened in September 2008 said it could house up to 300 inmates. But, no, it cannot. It can house up to 245, can’t it? How about his speech at the opening of the Alexander Maconochie Centre in September 2008? He said the capacity of the centre was 300. No, the capacity is 245. How many times did they have to lie? How about ACT Labor’s election promises on their website: the capacity of the AMC is 300. Oh, no, it is not. How about the briefing that was given to me when I took over as shadow minister: “The AMC will have the capacity for 300 detainees.” No, not true. How
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