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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2001 Week 10 Hansard (28 August) . . Page.. 3467 ..

Clause 6, as amended, agreed to.

Clause 7.

MR MOORE (Minister for Health, Housing and Community Services) (11.42): I move amendment No 2 circulated in my name [see schedule 9 at page 3568].

I indicated that this was part of the one that we did a minute ago.

Amendment agreed to.

MR OSBORNE (11.43): I move amendment No 3 circulated in my name [see schedule 8 at page 3565].

This amendment relates to remand, to people on bail. As I said, one of the concepts referred to in relation to home detention is net widening. This is where people who would not normally be sentenced to imprisonment are placed in home detention. My amendment will not allow this act to come into operation for remand prisoners until two years after the commencement of the act in order to give the Assembly time to evaluate how the program is going. As I said, this is an important part of the New South Wales study. It will prevent any unnecessary social stigma. It seems to me quite sensible that if a person can be trusted enough with home detention before they go to trial, then surely they could be given bail.

MR MOORE (Minister for Health, Housing and Community Services) (11.44): The government will be opposing this amendment. I would strongly urge other members also to oppose this amendment. I think the best argument is to see the remand centre. I have to agree with the spirit of where Mr Osborne is coming from. If we had that as an option then I would say that would be reasonable if we had already built a correctional facility. But at the moment we can manage to deal in this way with three or four people, or perhaps a woman with a child, who still needs restriction. We still need to know where she is so that we can be sure that burglaries are not being committed. This is better than being remanded.

If we had the facilities in the remand centre; if it was not as crowded as it is, and as inappropriate a facility as it is, I think I would probably agree with Mr Osborne, but, considering the pragmatic situation we have, I urge members to oppose this amendment.

MR HARGREAVES (11.45): I want to make a couple of points on this. One of my worries is that it is a two-year thing instead of three years. I would prefer three years, but I will go with two. We will have a look at it as we go along the track. The reason for saying that is I think there is a coincidence between the emergence of a replacement remand centre and the old one. I would have preferred to have this clause disappear, if you like, a year after the opening of the thing rather than around about the same time. That is one of my concerns, but I am prepared to wear this.

Another of my concerns, and I expressed this very early in the piece, is that there is a temptation with home detention when it comes to remand to do some cost shifting; to shift the cost, when it has been decided that someone should be detained in custody, from the state to the family. The family has to cop all of the hospitality costs and all the rest of

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