Page 1536 - Week 05 - Wednesday, 4 May 2016
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justice system is an issue that we cannot allow to rest. It is evident; we all know it. The trick is to find what practical steps we can take to tackle this rising trend.
I will not labour this point any further, other than to say that it is a challenge that all states and territories are grappling with. Certainly, when I go to corrective services ministers meetings, it is a topic that comes up there and it is one that jurisdictions are certainly sharing ideas on as well.
In that regard I do appreciate the fact that Mr Wall has addressed this topic today because it is a reminder for us all that we must continually strive to address this issue. I have included some information for Mr Wall and for the Assembly in the amendment that I have moved on some of the other points that he has raised. It is a matter of public record that a detainee recently escaped from corrections custody while at the Canberra Hospital receiving medical treatment. In my time there has been only one escape from custody, and that occurred not at the AMC but at the Canberra Hospital.
This was, of course, a concerning breach of security and it is being treated as such by corrections. I can assure the Assembly that corrections management are undertaking a range of actions in response to the escape and will change policy and procedures where required to minimise any chance of this happening again. But it is important to put it in perspective, and I have done that in my amendment. It notes that the ACT escape from secure custody rates for 2012-13, 2013-14 and 2014-15 were in fact zero. The 2015-16 year-to-date figure is as a result of that one incident that has arisen in the last few weeks. That number may change, of course, but I certainly do not anticipate any further incidents.
I hope that Mr Wall will reflect on those figures that have been provided and that he will not take any guidance from his former leader, Mr Seselja, who once referred to an aborted escape attempt; and the facts of this case are important to reflect on. Two detainees smashed a window at the AMC and were able to escape from their cell. They then jumped over a low internal fence inside the AMC, but they never escaped the perimeter of the AMC. In fact, they never got close. Ultimately, they contacted corrections staff and asked to be let back in to the jail because it was in the middle of winter, it was extremely cold and they wanted to go back inside the accommodation.
There is an amusing side to that story, but the point is that they never got very far, yet Mr Seselja described the AMC as the “most unsecure jail in the country” off the back of that incident. They never made it into the community. They never got very far at all. So let us not see that sort of exaggeration in this debate, because there simply was not an escape from custody on that occasion.
In relation to Mr Wall’s comments about other security breaches, real or imagined, I have, in response to a similar motion previously, stepped the Assembly through each of our risk management strategies, and I do not intend to repeat them again today. I am happy to take specific questions and to organise a briefing for members if they wish to go over particular points, but I have gone through in some detail on previous occasions a range of security measures that are in place at the AMC and the fact that they are constantly evolving to address issues that arise.
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