Page 4355 - Week 14 - Wednesday, 27 November 2013
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MR RATTENBURY: Thank you, Madam Speaker. I seek leave to move that amendment.
Leave granted.
MR RATTENBURY: With the indulgence of the Assembly, I move:
Omit the words “with all which” in paragraph 1(c), substitute: “with which all”.
Amendment to proposed amendment agreed to.
MS GALLAGHER (Molonglo—Chief Minister, Minister for Regional Development, Minister for Health and Minister for Higher Education) (6.16): The government will be supporting Mr Rattenbury’s amendment, as amended.
Mr Coe: Isn’t he the government?
Mr Hanson: He is the minister.
MS GALLAGHER: Well, in this case he is the minister responsible. The government is supporting the amendment. I think it is a good opportunity to—
Mrs Jones: It’s a bit like Andrew’s two personalities.
MS GALLAGHER: I am speaking as Chief Minister and because of the issues that have been raised about the history of this facility. I think it is at a high level. It is important for the Assembly to reflect on the fact that the Canberra Liberals, since Bill Stefaniak’s days, have never supported the ACT having a jail.
Mr Coe: The management of your prison.
MS GALLAGHER: It predates your time, Mr Coe, because there was an election—
Mr Doszpot: Quite right.
MS GALLAGHER: It is. I think it was the 2004 election where it was such a successful strategy that we actually won majority government. But all of the money that had been allocated to build the jail was going to be taken out of the jail and used in the health system. I remember the ads vividly. They had sirens going off about what a waste of money constructing a jail in the ACT was and how it should not be done, and that the Canberra Liberals did not support the project.
We have to look at this motion while keeping in mind the fact that the Canberra Liberals have not supported the ACT looking after their own prisoner population, and what they did support was the continuation of farming prisoners out to New South Wales and detaining people for long periods of time at a completely inappropriate Belconnen Remand Centre.
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