Page 3491 - Week 08 - Thursday, 23 August 2012
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As I said in my Health speech tonight, I am very pleased that the ACT government has recommitted to building a forensic mental health unit. There were some concerning trends early this year about the number of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander detainees being held at the crisis support unit. The estimates committee recommended that the Justice and Community Safety Directorate annual report detail the number of detainees held in the crisis support unit in terms of gender, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander status and other pertinent socio-demographic categories.
The committee also recommended that the annual report detail the number of detainees held in the crisis support unit for longer than two weeks. The government’s response to the committee’s report said it agreed in principle to this recommendation but ultimately would not be in a position to do this as the crisis support unit is only meant to accommodate people temporarily. I hope this is something that can be looked at further. While we continue to have this unit people are being held who need to be in other settings, and this will continue to be an issue.
The lack of general counselling services at the AMC was pointed out by the Hamburger review as an issue. The estimates committee asked the government to advise which general counselling services are available. The government responded by noting that seven specific and niche counselling services are provided to detainees. The government could not detail any general counselling services. The Greens believe this is a matter that should be investigated further.
The new funding for through-care is a positive step. I know many community groups are supportive of this. It is an issue the Greens have been following closely and, while we believe this should have been in place sooner, it is definitely progress. Community groups have raised concerns that women in prison are receiving inadequate services. While women comprise a small population within the prison, they must have access to comparable services as other detainees, including productive education and training opportunities.
As I mentioned in my speech addressing health funding, the Greens support, and for some time have called for, the introduction of a needle and syringe program at the AMC. Mr Hanson obviously mentioned this in his speech. It is disappointing that this issue has been used as a political football. I congratulate the government on making the decision to establish the NSP. As I said before, I think it is a victory for evidence-based policy over using it as a political issue.
I would also go to some of the comments Mr Hanson made about corrections in general which had, I think, a dog-whistle element to them. Having brought up the amount that is paid for prisoners in New South Wales, I certainly hope that Mr Hanson is not suggesting that we will be using that as an indicator, given that in the New South Wales corrective system there are very high recidivism rates and we know that around 80 per cent of prisoners in the New South Wales prison system have a mental illness.
We are trying to do something different here in the ACT, which is to be commended. It is an easy issue to target politically. But we need to be providing these services in
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