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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 11 Hansard (28 November) . . Page.. 3291 ..

MR HARGREAVES (continuing):

Given that you have known about the overcrowding of BRC for over five years and that you have improved the accommodation at BRC by only six places in that time; given that in three years you have made no attempt to ensure that the corrective services bureaucracy is established in such a way as to be able to manage a new prison, let alone provide the management oversight for such a prison; given that you have indicated on 2CC radio today that your reason for not investing in the upgrading of buildings at the periodic detention centre to take low security remandees to take the pressure off BRC is that the periodic detention centre will not be used at its present site in two years time; do you acknowledge that low security remandees could have been housed at the periodic detention centre, and will you acknowledge that you have not administered the corrective services portfolio satisfactorily?

MR HUMPHRIES: I would not mind copping criticism on this fact from somebody else but, coming from the Labor Party, this happens to be pretty rich. Throughout its time in government the Labor Party steadfastly refused to acknowledge that we had a problem with our structure of corrective services in this town. Every time the Liberal opposition raised the fact that the remand centre was out of date and needed to be replaced, that it was in desperate need of its own process to handle its own corrective services-

Mr Wood: It was the former Chief Minister Rosemary Follett that opened up the possibility of a correction centre. You were backing off that until she did so.

MR HUMPHRIES: Having a possibility of a correction centre is, frankly, a grossly inadequate reaction.

MR SPEAKER: Order! Mr Humphries is endeavouring to answer your colleague's question.

Mr Wood: He is endeavouring to mislead the house. That's what he's endeavouring to do.

MR HUMPHRIES: Mr Speaker, it is out of order to suggest I misled the house. I ask that it be withdrawn.

MR SPEAKER: Yes, Mr Wood. I think you should, please.

Mr Wood: I couldn't hear what he said.

MR HUMPHRIES: You said I was attempting to mislead the house.

Mr Wood: Speak up.

MR SPEAKER: The accusation was that the Chief Minister was misleading the house, and he wants it withdrawn.

Mr Wood: Is he talking to me?

MR SPEAKER: I believe so, yes.

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