Page 4348 - Week 14 - Wednesday, 27 November 2013
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This is the wonderful human rights compliant jail that was boasted of—remember: the jail that was going to be delivered by the Labor government. It is not me saying this, Madam Deputy Speaker; it is the Official Visitor saying this—that it is a no-no, that you do not mix remanded and sentenced. You do not do it in any way. Let me go on:
… it is the overcrowding that troubles me. I think that is the number one issue at the moment. The growing tension between prisoners and officers, you can feel it. There is a tension there, and, obviously, the more people you squeeze into a place that is only built for a certain capacity, the greater is the potential for dysfunction or trouble.
When I have been talking about the prison capacity, I have been doing so because I do not like being misled and I do not like the community being misled. I have been making the case very strongly that we were misled; I think we have been able to prove that, and I will go through that later in my speech.
But perhaps the more important point, and the more important point going forward, is that this government has wilfully created a situation where the Official Visitor is talking about the potential for dysfunction and trouble, the growing tension between prisoners and officers. He says that you can feel it, the tension, with people being squeezed into a place that is only built for a certain capacity. That is the legacy of this utopian jail that this mob said that they were going to deliver and that Minister Corbell has flick-passed to his Green mate Mr Rattenbury.
That is the legacy when they are out there boasting about their human rights compliant jail. The reason is that they knowingly built a jail that was too small. They had the advice; they had the evidence. They said that this jail would be big enough, and they knew it would not be. They had the Rengain report from 2002 that said: “You will need a prison of 480 beds. You are going to need that.” He understood all of the implications of what the growth was going to be in prisoners and the complexity of male and female, sentenced and remand, maximum security and minimum security, and protected prisoners. He said, “You will need 480 beds.”
Walker had a look at this and said, “You might get away with 326 or 348.” On another scenario, he referred to 414. So you have got Rengain and Walker saying you will need over 400 beds. It looks as though they were on the money, but they were ignored.
There was then Treasury analysis from 2003. That has a figure in it of 374. We know that set the figure where the government said, “Okay; we will do 374.” So they got a bunch of projections—480, 414 and a Treasury one that said 374. And they went for the lower one to get 374.
There was further information that was provided in a question on notice that was received earlier this year. That had different projections, but essentially 374 was the number. Mr Stanhope, when he talked about building the jail in 2004, said, “That is what we are going to build.” He said:
The Alexander Maconochie Centre—
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