Page 4697 - Week 13 - Wednesday, 27 November 2019
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I would like to formally acknowledge the members of the council in the Assembly: Brigadier Alison Creagh CFC, who is the chair; Mr Gerard Pratt, the deputy chair; Major General Dave Chalmers AO CSC; Mr Chad Hodgens; Ms Pat McCabe OAM; Flying Officer Shaun McGill; Ms Suzanne McGuiness-Butler; Mr Rob Marshall; Mr David Munro; Squadron Leader Gary Oakley OAM; Dr Kathryn Spurling; and Ms Virginia Hayward.
I want to provide heartfelt thanks from myself, my office and the ACT government to each member. Our community is grateful for their devoted and selfless service to our country and to other veterans and their families. They have made a measurable impact on the lives of many veterans in Canberra.
I want to place on record my anticipatory thanks to the incoming members of the new-look advisory council, and veterans and their families, for the work that they will be continuing to do over the coming years. They are picking up the baton after a very strong piece of work from the previous council, but I have no doubt that they will continue that work.
Finally, I wish to place on record my thanks to the many people who have supported the work of me and this government over the past 12 months: my staff; the wonderful DLOs across the various directorates, whose work is often unsung and underpraised, but who often do the work to keep this government going in many ways; and the officials across the range of directorates that I have the privilege of working with. I thank them for their strong work and their dedication to the people of Canberra and making Canberra the great place that it is and can continue to be. I wish them and all the people of Canberra a very good Christmas.
Alexander Maconochie Centre—federal detainee
MRS JONES (Murrumbidgee) (6.15): I rise today to speak about Robert Macklin’s City News article, “Who is Canberra’s mysterious secret prisoner?” Having read this concerning article I wrote immediately to the minister for corrections seeking a briefing. It is an interesting new understanding that we have federally convicted inmates here as we do not have any federal prisons. But it has also become clear that the minister is not regularly briefed on how many federal inmates we have and under what conditions and circumstances those inmates are held. This should change.
For some reason the inmate was denied a visit from a journalist, Mr Macklin, when he asked for one. I have been informed that that is due to conditions that were put on the time he was to serve in the facility. As a result of the request to meet with Mr Macklin, his brother’s house and his cell were both raided in, it is my understanding, the search for the manuscript of a book he was writing.
This matter concerns me much more than him being denied a meeting with a journalist; the matter I am exercised about is that the inmate wrote a manuscript and, according to him, after requesting to have this meeting he was discouraged in some way from continuing to write his manuscript. It is my understanding that the manuscript had nothing to do with his offending and that it was a work of fiction.
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