Page 2675 - Week 07 - Tuesday, 28 June 2011
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(a) on a motion to adjourn the Assembly, irrelevant matters may be debated; and
(b) on the motion for agreement in principle to appropriation bills …
I believe, Mr Hanson, your referral to incidences or issues unrelated to the Hamburger report is out of order. I remind you that the Buchanan issue is unrelated to the Hamburger report, and I ask you to come to the point and to make sure that you stick to the relevance of the question; otherwise I will have to ask you to sit down.
MR HANSON: Certainly. In order to do so, therefore, I shall quote from the Hamburger report:
… in this critical first year of operation—
Mr Smyth: So this is in the Hamburger report?
MR HANSON: It is directly quoting from page 106 of the report, Mr Smyth:
Therefore, in this critical first year of operation the AMC did not have continuity of leadership in the key role of Superintendent. Instead the position was filled by a series of officers for short terms. The opportunity to drive efficiency and effectiveness through a Superintendent with continuity in the role who would lead by example and would mentor and monitor the performance of the leadership team was lost;
Advice from the Executive Management Team in ACT Corrective Services is that, “with the wisdom of hindsight”, there was also inexperience at the middle management level in the AMC staffing structure. This is not a criticism of these staff as relatively few correctional managers and staff have the opportunity to experience the commissioning of a new correctional centre. However, this situation highlights the necessity to have an experienced Superintendent in place providing continuity of leadership;
The above lack of continuity and experience in the AMC leadership team created a potential risk to the safety, security and efficient operation of the centre given the significant number of new inexperienced staff. On 31st May 2010 ACT Corrective Services arranged with another jurisdiction to second a highly experienced officer to fulfil the role of Superintendent.
I will stop quoting to insert that that was Mr Buchanan. It continued:
Such an arrangement provides the opportunity for continuity of appropriately experienced leadership in the role.
From the relatively limited interaction the audit team members have had with the current AMC Superintendent he demonstrates strong experience in management of secure correctional facilities. There is evidence that he is mentoring the AMC leadership team and leading by example in his interactions with staff and detainees. Feedback from some external stakeholders is that the Superintendent is having a positive impact on AMC operations. ACT Corrective Services say that since his appointment:
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