Page 915 - Week 03 - Tuesday, 29 March 2011
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was a nice shiny new building where we were assured that there were no hanging points. When I visited the centre before it was opened, we were assured that there were no hanging points. But we know that there are hanging points.
Now we have here today another litany of inquiries into Bimberi youth detention centre. We have had two inquiries as a result of this dreadful incident on 5 February, and here today the minister has talked about two more inquiries, one by Clayton Utz into the conduct of staff and another by Mr Donataccio, an interstate expert in security, on top of the inquiry being conducted by Mr O’Neill and on top of a human rights audit and the inquiry into the youth justice system.
What we have here is a debacle. I want to put on the record that the minister has said nothing about the unfortunate man who was seriously injured on 5 February. She has not reported to the Assembly about his condition, the nature of his injuries and the nature of his recovery, and I send to that man, on behalf of the Canberra Liberals, the best wishes of the Canberra Liberals for a speedy recovery.
First and foremost, this is an exercise in covering the minister’s backside. She has used that expression herself: she visits Bimberi because she has to, because she needs to cover her backside. She thinks that this motion, this statement here today, will do that. But what it does is highlight the systematic failure of this government since the opening of Bimberi to ensure that this is a safe place for the young people who live there and the people who work there and who are charged with their education and welfare.
The most telling thing is, and it needs to be repeated for the benefit of the Assembly, that the two reviews conducted so far have found a number of factors contributed to this unfortunate incident. The minister says:
… key among them was a failure by some staff on duty that night to follow policies and procedures; also highlighted was that inadequate training provided to the MSS guard who was assaulted, and a failure to adequately reinforce a security defect which had been previously identified.
The minister’s response to that was that she is “disappointed”. She should not be disappointed; she should be outraged. She should be thumping the table. She should be calling for heads to roll—because somebody nearly died that night, and they knew that there were risks.
Let us go through this. On page 3 of the statement it says:
The MSS guard was not supervised despite an experienced youth detention worker being available to do so …
It says also:
The MSS guard was placed in a unit and was not approved to work unsupervised as he had not completed his training.
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