Page 2369 - Week 06 - Thursday, 23 June 2011
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Mr Buchanan. That conversation opened up with the Greens saying, “We are not inclined to support this motion.” This is where the conversation started. I do not speak to the detail of it but it was probably an attempt to say: “We don’t want to do this committee process. Don’t do that.”
You have got to remember that Mr Buchanan has spoken publicly already. He has been on the public record. He wants to be on the public record. He has spoken to the Canberra Times on two occasions. He is proud of his service. He is very proud of his record and he thinks that his actions will stand up—
Members interjecting—
MR ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Mr Hargreaves): Just a second, Mr Hanson. Stop the clock, please. Members of the crossbench will stop interjecting. Thank you. Mr Hanson, you have the floor.
MR HANSON: He believes very firmly, as I understand it, that his actions will stand up to scrutiny. The problem is that if this is buried, if this is rejected by the government and Greens or buried because of our Public Interest Disclosure Act, then nobody will ever know. And all we will have is this tainted reputation of Mr Buchanan.
This is someone who, after 34½ years service and having been called on by the ACT government to sort out the problems at the ACT jail, is now under a cloud and has been terminated from his employment. And if we do not have a public inquiry, if we do not know what occurred, and have it out in the open, then what will remain—and this is far more damaging for Mr Buchanan—is a cloud over his good name. After 34½ years of dedicated service in corrections, both in New South Wales and the ACT, what will happen is that Mr Buchanan will be left with a tainted reputation because the government and the Greens will refuse to have this matter out publicly, as Mr Buchanan himself wants.
Mr Buchanan’s concerns are in part about what happened to him—and yes, he certainly feels aggrieved and so he should—but his principal concern, as he put it to me, is for the staff of the Alexander Maconochie Centre. As was found in the Hamburger report, when he arrived there were problems. There was inexperience. There was a lack of leadership. He came to that jail and resolved a lot of those problems. And Mr Hamburger found that. The government was applauding him not so long ago. He resolved a lot of those problems. And he is very concerned that what has happened is that he has been terminated and there is a cloud over him.
The allegation that I have heard is that prisoners out there are giving each other high fives. That is the word coming back from the corrections officers out there. If you are a convicted criminal—and this is what appears to have happened, on the surface—you can make a complaint about the superintendent and before an investigation is started the superintendent gets the flick.
Hamburger was saying there were problems with security and safety out at the jail because there was not good leadership and the government has created the situation
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