Page 1404 - Week 04 - Wednesday, 6 April 2011
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on the notice paper. The reason it is so damning is quite clear. This minister has failed in his responsibilities.
There are three things that I want to turn to. Firstly there are the bad reports. We have seen the Burnet report, we have seen the first Hamburger report, we have seen the second Hamburger report and we have seen the litany of failures since this jail was opened falsely on the eve of the ACT election, all the way through to just a couple of weeks ago. We have seen all the failures that have been occurring.
I note that my colleagues and I are not the only ones that share this opinion. The Canberra Times editorial of yesterday stated:
Sadly, the centre has proven to be a shambolic disappointment.
I am quoting from the editorial. I quote further:
All new institutions have teething problems, but the institute’s report suggests the Alexander Maconochie Centre is failing its very purpose—and by a long way.
I agree with that assessment and I think that the time for the minister to say that these are teething problems has long gone.
Of course, we have the Burnet report. We have the final version or the third final version. I will wait until tomorrow to see what the government has been able to get cut out of the final version that we have. But the question is whether this would ever have been released. It is interesting, given Ms Le Couteur’s last motion, which was about government openness and accountability in the release of documents, that the only reason that we have this document is that it was provided to us, because it was unlikely, I think, that the government was going to release it at all, certainly not any time soon.
But if you go through the Burnet report and look at the mismanagement that is occurring at that jail, what is stark and what is a highlight is the failure in leadership. You would expect that there would be some problems. You would expect that there would be some errors made. But the evaluation team assessed that there was—and I am quoting—“a lack of leadership and coordination of drug-related activities at the AMC”. If the minister is not responsible for that, then who is? And I quote again:
Overall the service system intended to address drug-related issues at the AMC suffers from a lack of clear policy direction …
Who is responsible for policy direction, if not the minister? It continues:
… that there is no coordination across providers in the AMC … and that there is little overarching leadership and no governance and leadership structure to support effective drug service delivery across the AMC.
Further, the evaluation team identified multiple areas where policy was being implemented ineffectively or not at all. Governance issues have emerged in relation to
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