Page 2674 - Week 07 - Tuesday, 28 June 2011
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and told us that, indeed, when he had said to the Assembly that drug testing was occurring it was not occurring, so he commissioned that report. I think I have got the thread through the needle there.
Mr Barr interjecting—
MR ASSISTANT SPEAKER: Minister, thank you very much. I do not need your help. I do not need those sorts of snide remarks either, Mr Hanson. You can get on with your speech or sit down and look at the standing orders. You can have a look at standing order 202(a) if you like. Now continue with your speech, Mr Hanson.
MR HANSON: Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker. That is the genesis of the two reports from Mr Hamburger. I will go further to make a point about some of the findings in the report, and I think the one that is probably of greatest consequence is that the current capacity of 300 beds “leads to challenges in separating or segregating detainees, which places constraints on the delivery of services to detainees and the management of the safety and security of the correctional centre”. It is worth reflecting on that. The reason the capacity is 300 beds is that this minister made a conscious decision to break an election promise to deliver a correctional facility with 374 beds and delivered a facility with 300 beds.
In so doing, the minister said to an estimates committee in 2007 that, in its current bed configuration, it would give capacity in the jail for the next 25 years. In the same period, he was signing an answer to a question on notice that stated quite clearly that the government estimated that the number of prisoners at the jail of all categories would be 247 by 2009. Subsequently they said that, at about 245, the jail is full. When you add those three things together, you find that, if they knew the jail was going to be full when it had 245 people in it, then they knew it was going to be full in 2009. But the minister was saying that it was going to have the capacity for 25 years.
Whichever way they try to argue themselves out of this—they say, “No, you don’t understand; beds are different to capacity,” or, “No, no, things have changed”—the reality is that the fact that the jail is full and the fact that we have had so many problems in there identified by Mr Hamburger is because Simon Corbell reduced the number of beds in the jail. He said that it would have capacity for 25 years knowing that it would not. If he did not know that then he was incompetent in what he said.
The third point I would like to make is about Mr Doug Buchanan, because this report—
MR ASSISTANT SPEAKER: Mr Hanson, please resume your seat. Stop the clock, please. Mr Hanson, the motion before the Assembly is that the Assembly take note of the paper that the minister has delivered into the so-called Hamburger report. I am minded to refer to the standing orders, and I remind members of standing order 58:
A Member shall not digress from the subject matter of any question under discussion:
provided that:
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