Page 4365 - Week 10 - Wednesday, 22 September 2010
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I have just gone through it in detail. If it is not going to be supported, then, as I said, I would certainly grant leave to the members of the government or members of the crossbench to identify to me where they have a problem with any of those statements. If they vote this down, they are voting down what I think is a very reasonable motion that calls on some quite reasonable principles.
If they think that drugs are not harmful, that they are not a factor in crimes committed and that rehabilitation from substance addiction is not made difficult where drugs are available, and if they do not think that the eradication of illegal drug use is a good idea and that the rehabilitation of prisoners is a good idea, then they should vote against this motion. Clearly, that is what they are going to do. We can see that the ideology of the Greens and the government is blurring their reason in this regard.
The principal speech that I gave talked about the issue of needle and syringe programs but it talked much more about many other issues in terms of the problems that we have had at the Alexander Maconochie Centre. I have been accused in the speech by the Greens of using the jail as a football. This has been a political football in ideology from the government. It is the experiments that they have tried to introduce through the Alexander Maconochie Centre—this focus on human rights as opposed to proper discipline and security measures—that have turned the jail into the political football that it is. I went through that litany of problems that they have had which have been exposed to the media. They have got a lot of problems. It is not my issue. This latest issue of drugs in the jail was not even raised by me; it was raised by Mr Stanhope in a radio interview.
But let me turn to the issue of needle and syringe programs, which was the major topic of the speech by Mr Hargreaves and Ms Bresnan. No, we do not support it. And the corrections officers do not support it. In fact, as I understand it, the Prison Officers Association of Australasia—all the prison officers in Australia and New Zealand—recently passed a motion that says “needles in, staff out”. We are listening to the advice of the corrections officers. We have spoken with them. We agree with them that this is not a good idea, for a number of reasons, including the safety of prison officers.
There is a lot that we need to be doing to make sure that we have a target of eradicating drugs from jail—certainly lessening the amount. Although Mr Hargreaves quoted the fact that there are more drugs in New South Wales than in the ACT, he has got no evidence for that. What seems to be occurring at the moment is that it is quite clear that we have a significant problem here in the Alexander Maconochie Centre. I do not think that enough is being done to eradicate that problem.
With the position of the government and, it would appear, the Greens—and now that Mr Hargreaves has put his stake in the ground—it appears that there is no-one left on the government benches who is opposed to an NSP. It would appear that the will of this Assembly by the majority of its members will be moving forward with this program. It is something that we need to raise and discuss in the community. Although there are people who sit on the benches here who think it is a good idea, if you go down to the jail and speak to the corrections officers—and you have done that, Mr Hargreaves—you will know that they do not support it at all.
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