Page 917 - Week 03 - Tuesday, 29 March 2011
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they answer. If Ms Burch was really interested in transparency, she would be providing the whole of the report from Mr Keating. But she is not. She is just talking about the recommendations and I wonder what the findings tell us, what the narrative underpinning those recommendations tells us. It is important that this minister provides that information to the Assembly so that we know clearly the full extent of the failings that have occurred at Bimberi. The fact is that the incident on 5 February is a symptom of the failings, a very unfortunate, dangerous symptom of the failings, but not the only symptom of the failings.
This minister needs to be transparent. We need to ensure that everyone in this Assembly is fully informed about what is going wrong here. Then we have to go to the list of things that are being done. The minister thinks that by putting forward a list of things that are being done she is shown to be proactive. But what it tells us is that she and her predecessors failed to ensure that the systems were already in place. She has been the minister here for coming up to 18 months, and before that Ms Gallagher was responsible for this centre. All of these things should be slated home to both ministers because this is a system of failure.
Katy Gallagher spent a lot of time crowing about how much money was spent on the building. And let us remember that this was a $20 million facility that became a $42 million facility. We have spent all this money on a facility which is unsafe. From day one, from very soon after the place was open, staff were saying to me that there were real problems with the fabric of the building so that they cannot adequately supervise people when they are in their own rooms and that attempts at self-harm were a serious risk because of the configurations of the rooms so that they could not adequately supervise the young people there. That was one of the first messages I got from the staff. If I was getting that message, Bimberi knew that—and Bimberi, the staff, the department and the minister responsible did nothing about it. They did nothing about it when somebody did succeed in manufacturing a hanging point and nearly hanged themselves at Bimberi. They still did nothing about it.
The Canberra Liberals have been going back over the statements made by the minister in question time because there are some issues here. The minister here today said that we are now issuing people with duress alarms, keys and radios before they go into Bimberi. I would have thought this was basic equipment. When we asked about this, back after this incident in February, we were told that every staff member in Bimberi had a duress alarm. But the implications of the minister’s own statement here today show that that is not true. I have been told by other staff that it was only after this incident in February that permanent staff received duress alarms—some permanent staff, mainly teachers, received duress alarms.
There is a whole lot of stuff here that the minister extols as a virtue. They have recruited a part-time lifeguard. Did you know, Madam Assistant Speaker, that for months and months and months, especially over the summer, there was not a lifeguard there, so that the pool at Bimberi youth detention centre could not be used by the inmates? We built a pool, we built all this expensive infrastructure—we built workshops, we built commercial kitchens—and they are not used. They could not use the recreation facilities generally because the recreation officer left, I think last October—I will stand corrected on that—and was not replaced for a substantial period
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