Page 5368 - Week 14 - Thursday, 19 November 2009
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Fine. It continues:
Workers were sweeping the oval with metal detectors.
That sounds like reasonable work that has to be done before something can be opened. It continues:
The Committee’s progress around the site was hampered on a number of occasions by the failure of doors and locks.
I would simply say that, if you read pages 4 and 5, minister, you will find the shreds of evidence that you seem to have overlooked that back up finding No 2. Let us move on; let us pick a finding. Let us go to 22. Apparently, finding 22 has upset the minister. It says:
While there were significant delays in installing the AMC security system not all the delays to the commencement of operations of the AMC were due to the security system as the Attorney-General has contended.
That is finding 22. When you go looking at finding 22, the shreds of evidence that you need, minister, are on page 55:
The Committee does not believe that this is an accurate assessment …
Chubb bear some responsibility for delays … but it would be unfair to suggest, as the Attorney-General has, that they are the sole reason for delays …
While the parties are divided on … Chubb’s responsibility for the delays, they are in general agreement that, as the delays continued, Chubb was doing everything it could to fix the problems. The Minister for Corrections told the Committee that:
There is absolutely no reason at all that I can think of—and I have been involved in the security game on and off for 40 years—and there is no way that if the name of Chubb as a subcontractor was put up that I would suspect that they could not deliver; full stop.
Again there are paragraphs here that lead the committee members to a finding. The assertion by the minister in his defence that there is no evidence to back up the findings and the recommendations falls even on the brief few pages I have been able to read since I came down here a few moments ago. I know that the minister is upset when he is held to account. He is often upset like this. He has been upset like this for the decade that I have been here whenever he is caught out.
Let us face it. The opening was a sham. It was an election stunt, and that is all it was. It was not done with regard for prisoners. It was not done with regard to better justice in the ACT. It was not done for rehabilitation. It was done for electoral advantage, and that is all it was. They opened it. They knew it was not open. The minister can blame whomever he wants but, at the end of the day, the committee—a unanimous, tripartite committee, with no dissenting report and with at least some shreds of evidence to
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