Page 3390 - Week 08 - Wednesday, 17 August 2011
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Drug trafficking into the centre reduced …
Detainee management strategies have been enhanced.
It is quite clear from Hamburger that he had been brought in to do a job and he was doing that job well.
What changed? What changed, it appears, is that Mr Hamburger made it very clear that he did not support the government’s push for a needle and syringe program in the jail. He was opposed to it, as are 99 per cent of the corrections staff at the Alexander Maconochie Centre. He made that very clear in the media. The Canberra Times said:
Yesterday he broke his silence about his departure, saying he believed one reason for his axing was his opposition to the Government’s proposed needle-syringe program.
“I opposed a needle exchange in a correctional environment due to the safety of staff ...
What sort of message are we giving prisoners here that it’s okay to bring drugs into a prison?
My position was well known. I would have opposed it morally and that wasn’t on the Government’s agenda.
“I support the union’s position on this, and I’m a union member myself. It’s dangerous enough without throwing syringes into the mix.”
What seems to have happened is that Doug Buchanan was brought in and was praised by everyone—as I understand it, by the minister himself. He then made it clear that he did not support the push for a needle and syringe program. And then, at the first opportunity, given an opportunity, when an allegation by a prisoner was made about Mr Buchanan, before investigation was even commenced by the police, they gave him the sack. They got rid of him. That is just extraordinary. It really raises questions about due process.
The minister still sits there and says that this was all done by agreement, but Mr Buchanan has made it very clear in the media and to me personally in conversation that that was not the case, that this was not done by agreement. He was given the flick. He was sacked. His position was terminated against his will. His contract was finished; he was sent back to New South Wales. The minister is pretending that it was all by agreement. He has said on the Hansard in the estimates hearings that this was all by agreement, when quite clearly it was not.
He was sacked before that investigation commenced. Now what we know, based on information provided to Mr Buchanan by the Australian Federal Police, is that that investigation is not going anywhere; there is no case to answer by the police for Mr Buchanan. This is a fellow who has been brought in, who is doing a good job, but who raises objections to the needle and syringe program and is given the flick because a prisoner makes an allegation.
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