Page 480 - Week 02 - Wednesday, 21 February 2018
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video
custody? Does the Chief Minister disagree with the fact that many prisoners have escaped? Does the Chief Minister disagree with the fact that two Indigenous brothers were bashed and hospitalised? Does he disagree with the fact that we have had a forensic investigation into the detainee trust fund? Does he disagree with the fact that a prisoner was accidentally released in December last year?
I note he is not even in the chamber, knowing full well that this discussion would go to his response. I can assure you that all of these events did happen. They are true. I have not characterised anything. I have in fact been quite careful not to characterise very much at all. These are facts.
The Chief Minister also wrote that he did not agree with my “assessment of the minister”. The minister is a perfectly intelligent man. The minister has shown through his history in this place that he is capable of a great deal, so I still do not understand, and I think the community does not understand, how this facility has become such a disordered place.
This is what we have come to expect from the government: questions will not be answered; they will be ignored, as with the previous motion—anything that makes them look bad or incompetent. I give one thing to the minister: when bad things happen, he does not pretend they have not happened. He says he is disappointed, as we all are. But the question really is: what needs to happen in order for the system to change sufficiently that such events do not continue to happen?
Despite the seriousness of the state of affairs, the Chief Minister did not answer my question as to whether the Greens leader was the appropriate fit for the portfolio of corrections. Nor did the Chief Minister advise whether he still had confidence in Minister Rattenbury’s capacity to fix the dangerous mess that is of his own making. This minister has been in charge of the facility for more than half of its life, for over five years. Anything going wrong in the system is not somebody else’s fault. I am calling on the Chief Minister to finally answer these questions. The Chief Minister can no longer turn a blind eye to this minister’s neglect and inability.
We also need to hear from Minister Rattenbury—and I am sure we will, but we need to hear answers. The minister acknowledged this himself when he told WIN News, “We need to look at our systems now to look at why this happened and to make sure that corrective measures are put in place.” I look forward to hearing from the minister, hopefully in the debate, about what corrective measures have been put in place. What happened and how can we be assured that it will not happen again?
You are absolutely right, minister. When inmates walk out the front door, we do need to look at the systems and figure out what is going wrong. We need to make sure that proper measures are put in place so that prisoners are not accidentally released. After being the minister for five years, I would have thought the minister would have already done that, but perhaps not.
It is an urgent matter of basic public safety. It is something I am sure all members of the Assembly would agree is a very high priority. The minister said that an explanation was required and that corrective measures needed to be implemented, so
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video