Page 5299 - Week 14 - Wednesday, 29 November 2017

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(ii) within three weeks, another inmate escaped custody after being admitted to The Canberra Hospital and was not found until 12 days later in Campbell, ACT;

(e) The Canberra Times, in November 2017, reported that an “anomaly” had been identified in the AMC Detainee Trust Fund and that KPMG had undertaken a forensic investigation into the matter; and

(f) that the Minister has taken effective action to address the lack of accommodation for women detainees, by moving them to an existing facility within the Alexander Maconochie Centre and thereby allowing the management unit to be used for its proper purpose; and

(2) calls on the Government to:

(a) conduct a full review of the policies and procedures pertaining to the transportation, accommodation and supervision of inmates who are receiving healthcare outside of the Alexander Maconochie Centre;

(b) report back to the Assembly on the results and recommendations of the review by the first sitting in 2018;

(d) advise the Assembly by the first sitting in 2018 of the total cost to taxpayers of the search, apprehension and litigation of the two inmates who escaped The Canberra Hospital; and

(e) advise the Assembly of the trust accounting policy at the Alexander Maconochie Centre, and what policies or procedures have changed since the identification and investigation of the “anomaly”.

Recently the Minister for Corrections rose in this place and talked about his actions and achievements during the first year of this term of government. Of course, that included his view on how things have unfolded. There was not much mention of problems inside the AMC, the Alexander Maconochie Centre, the same problems which have continued to occur under this minister’s watch and develop over the five years. The minister has been responsible for the AMC for over five years now, and yet we have seen deaths, bashings, significant illicit drug smuggling, escapes and overcrowding. They have been the prominent features of the past year, from my work in uncovering some of this.

In February I moved a motion calling on the government to address a disparity between male and female detainees. This came about when I discovered there were more women in the AMC than dedicated women’s beds and fewer employment opportunities for women detainees than for male detainees. At that point in time the AMC was able to accommodate the widely reported 45 women, but with only 29 dedicated women’s beds. I will go a bit more into that shortly.

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