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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2002 Week 6 Hansard (15 May) . . Page.. 1658 ..

MR QUINLAN (continuing):

Previous to sighting this MPI, I had discussions in relation to the Belconnen Remand Centre on exactly what services are provided and what processes of identification exist. Members will be aware that, because we found it necessary to extend the BRC with an extra campus at Symonston-the PDC at Symonston-we have also been putting in place a protocol to ensure that whatever can be fitted in under "low risk detainee" will be the type of detainee that we will send to Symonston. That is a compact we have made publicly in order to allay fears that some people out that way still have.

It is an unfortunate but necessary thing we are doing at our periodic detention centre because in my own judgment-and I have said it is a layperson's judgment-the situation at the Belconnen Remand Centre is dangerous and the government would not have been able to allow it to continue, without taking some action, and then claim to have done all it could to obviate some or other unfortunate incident that might take place at the Belconnen Remand Centre.

I have been through the processes that they go through in terms of assessment of and in terms of reference to both health and mental health professionals. It is, I concede, a very difficult process. The actual fate of a detainee is decided by the courts, and I insist that is the way it should be. That power should remain with the courts and not with officers making subjective judgments, unless those detainees are handed over to the control of the particular agency or professionals for one form of assessment or another.

I am a bit disappointed that the need for mental health facilities has been somehow interwoven with the need for adequate remand centre capacity. They are both very important matters. However, I do think that they ought to have been discussed quite separately.

Mr Stanhope has already enumerated some of the difficulties that we face and some of the action that we are trying to take. I have got to say that when I first visited the Belconnen Remand Centre and got my briefing, it was a frightening experience. I am a big boy and I have been around a bit, but it was quite frightening to see and to contemplate the circumstances under which some people are detained for quite extended periods. That remand centre was so overcrowded that there was no room for activities. That place was compounding upon itself: the overcrowding created problems on the one hand and, on the other, there was no real space to interact with the inmates and possibly avoid compounding problems.

It was then odd, going to the periodic detention centre, to see what they were doing there in terms of activity and course work-not that all the weekend detainees were enjoying it. They were certainly being "invited", let me say, by the management to participate in courses that may in the long term be of assistance-once detainees got over their initial aversion to them. The remand centre had no such facilities.

There are therapy and counselling services available at BRC when we can fit them in. There is review by the psychiatric registrar. There is medication and case management because people come in there with all sorts of problems. Unless those problems are addressed in some manner-

MR DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order, Mr Quinlan! The time for the discussion has expired.

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