Page 1656 - Week 04 - Thursday, 7 April 2011

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Bimberi Youth Justice Centre—lockdowns

Ms BURCH (in reply to questions by Mr Coe and Mrs Dunne on Wednesday, 30 March 2011): I would like to provide Assembly members with the following information in relation lockdowns at Bimberi since it opened.

- Lockdowns are utilised as a last resort and for the shortest time possible.

- There is a safe guard under the Children and Young People Act 2008, Part 6.5 Living conditions at detention places (172). Young detainees must have access to the open air for at least 2 hours each day and can exercise for at least 2 hours each day. Since Bimberi Youth Justice Centre opened in September 2008, no breaches of the Children and Young People Act 2008, have occurred and every effort is made to minimise the use of lockdowns.

- As part of the routine for young detainees at Bimberi Youth Justice Centre, young people are confined to their cabins from 7.30pm until 8.30am each day. This routine confinement of young people overnight to their cabins is not included in the definition of lockdown.

- On occasions individual young detainees are separated and confined to their cabins for short periods due to behaviour issues including conflict with other young detainees.

- On a number of occasions during 2010 young people were confined to their cabins for operational reasons including coverage of lunch breaks for Youth Detention Officers and in the event of an incident within the Centre. The lunch break issue has been resolved with a staggered lunch break of Youth Detention Officers.

- There have been no centre or unit wide lockdowns of young detainees in 2011. There have been individual separations of young people over behaviour issues.

Climate change—impact assessment tool

Mr STANHOPE (in reply to questions by Ms Le Couteur on Tuesday, 5 April 2011): I am responding to your questions in the Legislative Assembly on 5 April 2011 about climate change impact assessment.

You asked “...what progress has there been in the development of a climate change impact assessment tool to help evaluate new policies and programs to ensure that they are consistent with the ACT climate targets, and when will the tool be finalised?”

The ACT Government is developing a triple bottom line assessment framework to assess the environmental, social and economic aspects of new proposals. Assessing climate change impacts will be an explicit element of the framework. Development of the framework is advanced and is expected to be finalised by mid-2011.


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