Page 3621 - Week 12 - Tuesday, 22 October 2013
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would invite Mr Rattenbury to go back and read those reports or, if he cannot be bothered, the front pages of various editions of the Canberra Times; or perhaps he can go back and read the Hansard in 2009, 2010, 2011 and last year—that the capacity of this jail was never going to be enough at 300.
What was unexpected was that for a while the numbers of prisoners in the jail were below those forecast, to this government’s good fortune and to the community’s good fortune. So the anomaly, what was unexpected, was that for a period of time we had prisoner numbers that were well below forecast. So do not come into this place saying that this is all a surprise when this government had direct advice, reports and analysis to the contrary. The capacity of 300 for this jail was never going to be enough. The government knew this. That is why the original capacity for this jail was planned to be 374—and 374 was the minimum. It was the bare minimum to have the capacity that it needed to have any sort of lifespan at all.
As we know, and as I have said repeatedly in this place—ignored by Mr Rattenbury—this government cut the size of the jail to a capacity of 300, which meant that it only had an operational capacity of 245. It did so for two reasons. First, it blew the budget. Its budget had already blown out by $20 million and it needed to rein that in because it was a political embarrassment. Second, it wanted to open this jail before the 2008 election. It did so on 11 September 2008, the day before the caretaker period. As we all remember, it did not accept any prisoners for well over six months because it was not ready to be operational. This government rammed through a jail that was undersize, not ready to be opened and over budget for its own cheap political purposes. Mr Rattenbury is trying to rewrite history to try and create some illusion: “Let’s all forget that. This is all unexpected. Let’s solve it with a roundtable.”
Let me be pretty clear that if Mr Rattenbury in this place had listened to what the opposition was saying in various motions directly about the capacity of this jail—I invite you to go back and read the motions from 2009, 2010, 2011 and 2012—he would realise that we warned of this. What did the Greens do at that time? They did not support any of those motions. They ignored them. They sneered at the opposition for just rabble rousing and raising concerns that were not legitimate and turned every single debate into a debate about needles and syringes. While we were warning about the capacity of this jail that is now having such a detrimental effect on prisoners and staff, all that Mr Rattenbury wanted to talk about over four years in the last term was putting needles into the jail. But now he has inherited this problem he is trying to rewrite history. I would say to you, Mr Assistant Speaker, that this is absolute hypocrisy.
We were told by the then minister, Simon Corbell, in 2007 when he was questioned by the opposition about the capacity of this jail—and these were his words—“This jail will have capacity for 25 years in its current bed configuration.” But what we know is that this jail is full. What we know is that there are bunk beds that have been cobbled together and put in there to try and retrofit it. What we know is that Mr Rattenbury’s solution to this problem that we consistently warned this government and the Greens about over the last four years is to now say, “Oh, well, let’s have a roundtable.” It is quite decisive stuff, I would have to say.
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