Page 1720 - Week 06 - Wednesday, 7 June 2023
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I will have more to say in the coming months on the commencement date of the act and the registration scheme, and the Environment, Planning and Sustainable Development Directorate and Access Canberra will continue to progress the implementation work.
Amendments agreed to.
Bill, as a whole, as amended, agreed to.
Bill agreed to.
Corrections and Sentencing Legislation Amendment Bill 2022
Debate resumed from 30 November 2022 on motion by Mr Gentleman:
That this bill be agreed to in principle.
MRS KIKKERT (Ginninderra) (10.52): I am thankful for the opportunity to speak to the Corrections and Sentencing Legislation Amendment Bill, which I and the Canberra Liberals will be supporting today. This bill is an omnibus bill and amends the Corrections Management Act, the Crimes (Sentence Administration) Act, and the Crimes (Sentence Administration) Regulation 2006. Each change is important to improve the correctional system in the ACT and the majority of the changes echo issues that I have either spoken about or called for in the past.
One of the changes is declaring the ACT a participating jurisdiction in community based sentence transfer. This is a small change but an important one. The ability to transfer community based sentences between jurisdictions allows offenders on non-custodial sentences to transfer to different parts of Australia. This allows them to move with their families in the case of their family moving interstate or if the offender starts a new career or new educational course.
One of the biggest changes in this bill will be the move to grant the director-general the authority to declare the entire Alexander Maconochie Centre a smoke-free zone. This move has been a long time coming and one of the major issues identified by the Inspector of Correctional Services in his 2019 Healthy prison review of the Alexander Maconochie Centre. Canberra has lagged behind most of the rest of Australia, with other states and territories banning smoking at prisons, indoors and outdoors, as early as 10 years ago. Banning smoking here in its entirety should have occurred some time ago. Not only would it be beneficial for the health of everyone at the AMC but it is also beneficial for the personal finances of the detainee and for the taxpayer. Millions of dollars in health expenses and infrastructure damage could have been saved if smoking had been banned earlier. The health benefits have been known for decades and the government should not have needed a review to tell them the obvious fire risk of smoking indoors and of detainees possessing cigarette lighters.
I note the legislation adds that the director-general may declare the whole of a correctional centre as a non-smoking area only if the director-general is reasonably satisfied that appropriate therapeutic support is available to help detainees at the
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