Page 1419 - Week 04 - Wednesday, 6 April 2011
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video
more work to be done, but that is to be expected. That is why the review has been commissioned.
So what is my responsibility as minister? Now my responsibility is to follow through on the recommendations of Mr Hamburger. That is exactly what I intend to do. Yesterday I announced the establishment of a task force led by the new Executive Director of the ACT Corrective Services with a membership that includes the Superintendent of the AMC; Mr Jeremy Boland, who is the Official Visitor to the AMC; Mr Fred Monaghan, who is a member of the Indigenous Elected Body; and Mr Simon Rosenberg, who has a close and longstanding involvement with issues surrounding the provision of through-care to prisoners and also drug policy relating to prisoners and who is now the Chief Executive of Northside Community Service.
Those five people will report to me, with the support of my department, on the issues raised by Mr Hamburger’s recommendations. They will give advice to me on the recommendations Mr Hamburger has made and what steps should be taken in relation to them. I have undertaken, as I indicated in my statement yesterday, to report to the Assembly on the government’s response to this report by June and to provide six-monthly reports thereafter on implementation of that response. Those are the steps and the actions of a responsible and accountable minister.
The challenge for the shadow minister is to lift himself up from the cheap political shots that he is all too often tempted to make and to focus on the complex and difficult public policy questions that arise from the administration of a correctional centre. It is particularly incumbent on him to rise above the feigned naivety that he continually demonstrates to the Canberra community by suggesting that there should be and there can be no contraband, including illicit drugs, in this correctional facility. There is nothing exceptional about the existence of contraband in a correctional facility. The only thing that is exceptional is Mr Hanson’s naive belief that it can be otherwise.
The challenge for this place is to have an engaged, considered and sophisticated debate about taking responsibility for our prisoner population, providing them with quality services and building on the strong foundation of a human rights compliant, rehabilitation-focused correctional facility. On this side of the house, we have had the courage to go on that journey. Those opposite have at every turn failed to do so. Now is their time to step up and engage in this debate as a responsible and considered opposition.
MR STANHOPE (Ginninderra—Chief Minister, Minister for Transport, Minister for Territory and Municipal Services, Minister for Business and Economic Development, Minister for Land and Property Services, Minister for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs and Minister for the Arts and Heritage) (12.22): Mr Speaker, I too adopt the position of the Attorney-General—this is a completely confected motion. It is a motion that ignores the basic premise of Mr Hamburger’s report and that is that the Alexander Maconochie Centre, the ACT’s prison, has extremely good systems and processes in place to protect and uphold the rights of detainees at the centre and that the AMC reflects in its policies, its procedures, its aspiration and its hopes best practice not just in Australia but best practice in relation to corrections in the world.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video