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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 5 Hansard (11 May) . . Page.. 1481 ..

Recommendation 15, suggests that that the Auditor General undertake an inquiry into the recovery of Criminal Injuries compensation payments from the perpetrators of the crimes. This recommendation is noted and has been referred to the Auditor-General for his consideration.

Only two recommendations, numbers three and seven are not supported.

Recommendation number three recommends that the Committee be provided with a full version of the KPMG Report on ACT community policing activities. The views of the Commonwealth were sought on the release of the KPMG Report and it agreed to release the Executive Summary only of the Report. The full Report is approximately 200 pages long and contains information and findings which are either directly attributable to Commonwealth owned information or are based on that information. It would not be practicable to 'black out' confidential information relating to Commonwealth operations. As a copy of the Executive summary has already been provided to the Committee this recommendation is not supported.

Recommendation seven seeks to provide the representative of Prisoners Aid with the same access to detainees at BRC as is given to the Official Visitor and religious representatives. This issue has arisen because the Prisoners Aid representative was also previously the Official Visitor and has had reduced access since a new Official Visitor was appointed.

For reasons of security and safety, it is desirable to have as few visitors with "open access" in custodial facilities as possible. In this regard it should be noted that:

� religious representatives do not enjoy the same unfettered access to detainees as does the Official Visitor and only visit detainees at pre-arranged times; and

� current access arrangements for Prisoners Aide representatives accords with that applying in other Jurisdictions.

For these reasons, this recommendation is not supported at this time. However, the issues of access rights for the new prison is currently being considered and there will be consultation on this matter in that context.

Recommendation eleven requests me to respond to the Ombudsman's suggestion that an administrative review committee be established to oversight the operations of the seven ACT administrative review bodies that are already in existence. Such a body on any scale would incur considerable cost and have resource implications. The Government's view is the opposite of the Ombudsman in that we believe there should be a rationalisation and reduction in the number of bodies that we have rather than creating a new one. I have, therefore, asked my Department to commence an examination of the extant ACT review mechanisms and to report to me on overlaps of responsibility and duplication of resources.

Mr Speaker, I commend the Government's response to the Assembly.

Debate (on motion by Mr Berry ) adjourned.

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