Page 2536 - Week 08 - Thursday, 30 August 2007
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I hope the minister is able to answer many of the questions which have been raised. It will be interesting to see whether he does, but I doubt that he will. The emergency services are of vital importance to the ACT community and we hope that they will get into better hands than we have seen in the past.
DR FOSKEY (Molonglo) (10.59): I have truncated my speech in the hope that we can get through the rest of the outputs. On the whole we are well-served by this Attorney-General. He has driven the new prison project through the slings and arrows of misguided criticism. He has championed the Civil Partnerships Bill the second time around, and he appears to have been effective in exercising the very limited control that the ACT can exercise over its police force.
Last year I outlined a scheme to enable the courts to be able to convert a fine to community service hours. This would benefit the defaulter, the community and the government. While the Attorney-General agreed with the principle behind my amendments to the sentencing legislation amendment bill 2006, he did not think present legislative arrangements could facilitate this happening. So, many people continue to be imprisoned because they cannot or will not pay their fines. They spend many grey, wasted hours in Belconnen Remand Centre and the exact quality of those wasted hours has been highlighted by the Human Rights Commissioner’s report released last week. While the problem is complex, I hope that the government will pursue this issue to enable people who generally cannot afford to pay their fines to work off those fines by performing community service.
I have concerns about the cost-cutting measures for the prison revealed in this year’s budget. I am concerned about where those cuts will fall. This issue takes on an added importance as it seems that the non-health components of the government are too scared of community backlash to implement something that has been recommended by the Human Rights Commissioner and by the indigenous health report—a needle exchange program for prisoners. I think it is very likely that there are quite a few people within the government who think that would be a good idea. This means that it is almost inevitable that transmission of HIV, Hepatitis C and other blood-borne diseases will continue at their current high levels. The sentence of two day’s jail for failing to pay a parking fine could hold the possibility of being upgraded to a death sentence. If a drugs-free prison environment was achieved it would be the first in the world, although, of course, it is a laudable aim. However, I think we need to be realistic especially when we are talking about a human rights compliant prison. By elevating political considerations above the health and wellbeing of detainees, I fear the government will thwart the genuine efforts of their correctional health experts to establish this truly human rights compliant and rehabilitative prison environment, which was negotiated through very complex and extensive discussions with community sector who did have concern that we would end up with just a prison. I fear that every time we strip a little bit of money from it, it is more likely that that will happen.
Obviously, the Greens support the push to a more rehabilitative prison. But justice policy has one of the strongest claims to the whole-of-government approach and we maintain that crime prevention is best achieved by reducing poverty, overcoming disadvantage, addressing the causes of violence and abuse, and reducing drug-related
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