Page 261 - Week 01 - Wednesday, 10 February 2010
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see a minister, the Attorney-General, rather than accepting the tripartisan report, actually turn on members of the Assembly, Greens, Labor and Liberal.
To quote from his speech today, he said “the lie of the committee report”. He is essentially calling the members of the committee liars, including Mary Porter, his own member. I can only ask this: was she naive? I do not think that is right. Was she politically motivated to attack Simon Corbell? I assume not. Or is she actually correct, as are the other members of the committee—the Greens member and the Liberal member? Maybe Simon Corbell needs to heed the committee’s report rather than attack its members.
Without going over old ground, one interesting fact that was put forward by Mr Corbell is that the design of the prison is such that you cannot actually get it to the capacity of 300. That is his reason for not wanting to bring prisoners from New South Wales. I would be intrigued to find out if that is the case. What is the capacity of the jail? If it is not 300—if we have 300 beds but in effect we can only have 200 prisoners there—that is information that would be interesting. I would ask that the minister provide that information at some stage to the Assembly. If the capacity is not 300, what is the capacity of the jail by the time you have to move around different categories of prisoners?
I will say to the Greens that I think that there is some confusion about what I am asking for with New South Wales prisoners being brought to the territory. I think that it is good for their rehabilitation; I think that it is a cost-effective measure. Because of the largely fixed costs of the jail, according to the advice provided by John Hargreaves at estimates hearings, by bringing prisoners in—this is something that John Hargreaves was calling for back in 2001—you would be able to mitigate some of the costs of the prison. It would be good for rehabilitation.
I certainly would not be calling for prisoners to be brought from New South Wales if that was to exceed the capacity of the prison. We do want to make sure that the prison can operate effectively. But it is a worthy goal that I think would support everybody’s needs and ensure that the costs of the prison are not such that we cannot put money from the territory into the diversionary-type programs that we want to have.
Mr Speaker, do we need to have the vote before I move my motion?
MR SPEAKER: Let us finish this item, Mr Hanson; then I will give you the floor again.
Motion, as amended, agreed to.
Order to table
MR HANSON (Molonglo) (9.14), by leave: I move:
That, under standing order 213A, the Attorney-General table the independent expert’s decision by 4 p.m., Thursday, 11 February 2010.
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