Page 1480 - Week 04 - Wednesday, 6 April 2011
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Question so resolved in the affirmative.
Amendment agreed to.
MRS DUNNE (Ginninderra) (5.18): To close, we now have a motion that calls on the Minister for Children and Young People and the minister for education to ensure that their respective departments provide to the Bimberi review team a copy of all policies and procedures that were developed specifically for the transition from Quamby to Bimberi and a statement explaining how the policies and procedures are to be applied in practice and how staff are trained in and informed of the operation of the policies.
It is interesting that Ms Hunter spent a lot of time saying we are halfway through the review. Is it possible that the review have not asked for this before and that they do not have it already? And you need to ask the question again, and I ask the question again: why is it that the Bimberi review team can receive this but it cannot be provided for the information of this place?
We have Minister Burch and Minister Barr trying to run a program accusing the Canberra Liberals of politicising things. And it has been a pretty constant message here today from the Chief Minister and Mr Corbell. Every time the Canberra Liberals say or do something that disconcerts the ministers, they say, “You are trying to politicise it.” Their politicisation, or what they say is politicisation, is the Canberra Liberals shining a light on the maladministration of the Stanhope government.
We have seen it today with the AMC and we see it here again with Bimberi. There is a theme here, and what it boils down to is that this government is pretty appalling when it comes to dealing with people in the criminal justice system, whether they are young people or whether they are adults. It has been an abysmal failure.
This motion today, despite everything that Mr Barr said, was not a political motion. This was a motion that called on the government to make it perfectly clear how people were educated about policies and procedures at Bimberi Youth Justice Centre. And the ministers still, although they had the opportunity, could not tell this place whether the principal of the Murrumbidgee Education and Training Centre has in fact conducted and ensured the conducting of protective behaviours programs for young people there, whether in fact there is annual training in mandatory reporting and whether in fact he has set up the procedures in the Murrumbidgee education centre in relation to mandatory reporting. But if you listen to the staff who, through frustration, have gone to the media, you rather get the impression that the programs have not been set up.
This is the minister who is responsible for care and protection policies inside the Murrumbidgee education centre. He cannot answer the question. He will vote with Ms Hunter to ensure that that question is not answered in this place. Why? Because this government cannot manage corrections. It cannot manage adult corrections and it cannot manage youth justice services for young people in the ACT. And what the Canberra Liberals have been doing today, in trying to find out information about how they manage this inside Bimberi Youth Justice Centre, has again shone the light on the failures of this government.
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