Page 1396 - Week 05 - Tuesday, 9 May 2006
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deprivations that may have started even before birth—for instance, if a child is the child of someone who is addicted to a drug that has a bad effect on the foetus. So that means we might need to have good nutrition, good exercise programs and good education programs. We might even have to have programs that work for the spirit, for the emotions, to rebuild self-esteem. These may be the sorts of things that the opposition refer to when they say, “The Maconachie Centre is like a motel,” or whatever. But they should think about that. It can be very difficult for those of us who have, comparatively speaking, had a life of privilege to acknowledge that other people have not.
Mr Stefaniak, along with Ms MacDonald and I, went to a conference earlier this year on sentencing. One of the things that got said there over and over again was the difficulty in educating the community about the role of sentencing. There is a knee-jerk reaction that we see at every election—we even see Labor governments doing it—with the “tough on crime” approach. What does “tough on crime” mean? It means more prison sentences, and that means more prisons. Do we might want New South Wales to build the extra prisons, rather than us? I do not know; apparently we do. But it is very concerning that Mr Stefaniak, who attended that conference and had access to all the expert papers, including from people whose job it is every day to impose sentences, has not come out with a better understanding. He is saying exactly the same things he said before that conference. That indicates the problem we are going to have in educating those who rely only on the tabloids for their information.
The new ACT prison is an issue. We do have concerns about it as well. We are concerned, as I think I was mentioning before Mr Stefaniak interrupted me, that a new lobby group has arisen that is now campaigning against the prison. Well, it is a bit late to do that. That was one thing that became clear at the last election when the opposition were saying that the money that was so far dedicated to the prison should go into the health system. It does appear too late to be having that debate, and that might be something that we might have to accept.
Nonetheless, the Greens will join the opposition in opposing the prison if it turns out that there is a really good reason to and other really good ways that we can deal with criminals or offenders in the ACT. But I do not think that is likely if the only thing we are going to do is send them away to New South Wales. We are aware of evidence that if the cells are built they get filled. We know that this new prison has planned cells for 374 full-time prisoners, with room for 120 more, while currently the ACT has an average of 116 prisoners a month in New South Wales correctional centres. We want to make sure that, when the new prison is complete, judges will not feel obliged to fill it. It is essential that the whole range of sentencing alternatives continue to be available in that the sentence is suitable to the crime and also to the offender.
I have not heard the opposition complain about the rebuilding of Quamby, which is good. I hope that means that we are all behind that. I am going to take up the minister’s invitation to visit Belconnen Remand Centre and the facility at Symonston because I have not been to those places. I have heard the stories about them, and I think it is part of my job to know what some people in the ACT experience.
Everyone knows that I have said that the health plan of the prison needs to be made public—we need to know how the physical and mental health needs will be dealt with—and we have also called for a program that will discourage the spread of blood-borne
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