Page 3083 - Week 07 - Thursday, 30 June 2011
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There are also issues in relation to the Human Rights Commission. There are the issues about the fact that again—and it was discussed in the annual reports hearing and the JACS committee reported upon that today, and it was discussed again in the estimates—the Human Rights Commission are treated as part of JACS for the purposes of budgeting and as a result they too take the large, high-level efficiency dividend rather than an efficiency dividend for small organisations.
The Human Rights Commission have a number of problems, and I have been very critical of their performance in some areas. For instance, when I asked for their service delivery standards documents just before Christmas last year I was told that I could not have them because they were not up to date. I asked for the service delivery standards that they were using. I found that they were service delivery standards that had existed before the Human Rights Commission was constituted in its present form. It eventually took four months to produce a three-page service delivery standards document which was eerily similar to the previous version which had existed since, I think, 2004.
I think that this is an organisation that is lacking in resources. We have heard time and again the commissioner saying that it is very difficult for her to conduct human rights audits in important places like the Alexander Maconochie Centre and the Bimberi Youth Justice Centre. As a result of the motion of last year and amendments brought about by Ms Hunter, there is now a human rights audit being conducted into the Bimberi Youth Justice Centre but we still have not seen a human rights audit of the sort that many in the community are wanting to see into the Alexander Maconochie Centre. If you are going to have organisations like this and you charge them with doing particular things, it is incumbent upon the government to fund them to do it. And we are seeing a government who is not prepared to do it.
In the couple of minutes remaining to me, I will touch on the failure of this government again to address the Supreme Court building. Again, it is all right for the government to build itself a bright, shiny, new central office building out in this car park, with an executive wing and a panic room and an air bridge to this building, but when you look at the constraints under which the officers and staff of the Supreme Court work, in a building which is a heritage piece—there is no doubt about it—the air conditioning is appalling, the facilities and the cell facilities are appalling. The issues that we have had with court security have to be addressed in a building which is not fit for that purpose. But the government are on the never-never: “One day we’ll get around to the Supreme Court building.” They have to make some decisions but they cannot make decisions while they have actually focused all their money on a $432 million house of hubris out in the car park here.
The people of the ACT, the institutions of the ACT, deserve much more attention from the government and the government should be paying much more attention to the institutions that make this community work rather than building a gold-plated office block for themselves.
MR CORBELL (Molonglo—Attorney-General, Minister for the Environment and Sustainable Development, Minister for Territory and Municipal Services and Minister
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