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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 7 Hansard (25 June) . . Page.. 2435 ..

MR SMYTH (continuing):

We must, however, realise that rehabilitation does not come by itself. To be effective, it needs to be part of a process; it needs to be part of programs. Rehabilitation needs incentive. What I am proposing here today is a way of providing incentive to offenders so that they more willingly undertake rehabilitation. But this incentive does not come at the cost of watering down a judge's right to pass heavy, if necessary, penalties.

Mr Speaker, many will complain that my reforms are predicated on an ACT prison. That is an incorrect assumption. Certainly, if we had a prison and we had full control of the rehabilitation programs within it, I would be in a position to guarantee the effectiveness of my reforms.

However, as long as we continue to shuffle our prisoners interstate, we will not have full control of the programs; we will not have full control of rehabilitation. Nonetheless, these reforms stand alone. We can accomplish its goals, with or without a jail here in the ACT.

Rehabilitation does not always work. We know that our hopes and expectations are often disappointed, but we must persist in building a system based on hope because no other approach is moral or humane. These offenders are people; they are sons and daughters, husbands and wives, and parents. All too often the most serious cases are our young men.

All but a very few can overcome their problems and can function as members of society only if we help them to do so, and we should help them. Mr Speaker, we should help them because all the other objectives we have for security, justice and reduction in future crime are best served by doing so. It is against this background that I present the Corrections Reform Amendment Bill 2003.

This is a modest bill, but it contains clever and creative new laws to help our corrections system function better and to incorporate rehabilitation into its most important elements. This is not a long bill, but it will bring important improvements to our corrections system. This bill is not a catalogue of rehabilitation measures, which are a developing science and must be delivered by government and their agencies, not by laws.

This is not a bill for harsher sentencing, nor is it for softer sentencing. It aims to be neutral on such a political question. Rather this bill simply presents better ways of doing things.

Mr Speaker, the major effect of this bill is to establish a more advanced basis for the courts to craft sentences and to direct, if they wish, possible changes to the penalties imposed during the term of an offender's sentence. The second effect of the bill is to establish a system by which changes in the penalties set by the courts are considered, granted or refused on the basis of performance against rehabilitation programs which offenders would undertake.

Basically, Mr Speaker, this is as simple as reward and responsibility. If offenders take their obligations to undertake rehabilitation seriously, then they will be rewarded. If,

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