Page 1416 - Week 04 - Wednesday, 6 April 2011
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this community. Most importantly, he should be censured because he has let down the people of the ACT, whose tax dollars he spends with gay abandon and yet he delivers poor outcomes continually.
MR CORBELL (Molonglo—Attorney-General, Minister for the Environment, Climate Change and Water, Minister for Energy and Minister for Police and Emergency Services) (12.07): It is just as well that Mr Seselja stood up in this debate, because if you had listened to Mr Hanson you would have thought that the mind was willing but the body was not when it came to the censure motion. This has to be the most lacklustre and the most unenthusiastic censure motion we have seen from the Liberal Party this year.
What is the reason for that, Mr Speaker? Why have we seen those opposite bring such a lack of passion and enthusiasm to this censure motion that they are moving today? Perhaps it is because they are getting tired. Perhaps it is the case that, after four censure motions, they are getting a little bit tired of making what is such a futile and inept attempt to raise the issue in this way. Perhaps that is the reason. Or perhaps the real reason is that they have actually read Mr Hamburger’s report and they now realise that the unsophisticated, out-of-context and unbalanced approach that they bring to this debate has finally been revealed for what it is.
Mr Speaker, the government—and I as the minister—are committed to a high level of scrutiny and transparency about the operations of our correctional facility. We have the highest level of scrutiny for the operations of this prison of any prison in the country. Let me draw to members’ attention the conclusions of Mr Hamburger on this matter. What does he find? He finds in his report that, in terms of appropriate external independent scrutiny, the AMC arguably is best practice in Australian jurisdictions.
That is not my conclusion. That is not my assertion. That is the assertion of the independent reviewer, a reviewer who has over nine years experience running one of the largest correctional systems in Australia, in Queensland. It is his conclusion that this government—of any government or prison system in the country—has put in place the framework for scrutiny of independent, outside surveillance of what is occurring in the prison. I am proud of that, Mr Speaker. I am proud of that as a minister. I am prepared to engage in the difficult and complex debate that is the running of corrections systems in this country and in this city.
I am also proud to be the responsible minister engaging in issues of complexity around the provision of corrections services. The real challenge in this debate is for those opposite to engage in a similar level of considered, contextual debate about what works and what does not in our prison system. We have a moral obligation as legislators, as a government, to provide the highest possible standards and to strive for the highest possible standards of care, protection and service for those whom we incarcerate against their will.
That is why the government agreed to this independent, external review. We have heard from those opposite that the government did not agree to it. They are just wrong, and that is just a lie, Mr Speaker. If you look at the Hansard record from 10 February—
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