Page 3067 - Week 07 - Thursday, 30 June 2011
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budget will fund a new position of prostate nurse care coordinator. The prostate nurse care coordinator will coordinate the care of patients with prostate cancer, including support, information and assistance to patients and their families undertaking the cancer journey. This position will cover diagnosis, treatment and palliative care if needed. It will assist people to navigate the health system and give them a fixed reference point.
The capacity of the Capital Region Cancer Service is being greatly enhanced in this budget.
This government is investing in health and the wellbeing of all Canberrans, and I congratulate it on its commitment.
Proposed expenditure agreed to.
Proposed expenditure—Part 1.12—Justice and Community Safety Directorate—$232,130,000 (net cost of outputs), $46,570,000 (capital injection) and $145,559,000 (payments on behalf of the territory), totalling $424,259,000.
MR HANSON (Molonglo) (8.03): I will be speaking to two areas: ACT Policing and ACT corrections. I will turn to corrections first. It is obviously a topic that has received much discussion in this place over the past couple of years. In the budget we have seen a number of issues relating to some of the points that the opposition has been making. Firstly, there is capacity—that there is money there to scope the capacity of the jail, what number of prisoners we have, what number of beds we need going into the future.
The point needs to be made again, and I will continue to make it, that the only reason we are doing this is because Simon Corbell decided to break an election promise to deliver a 374-bed prison which was due to cost $110 million and in fact delivered a 300-bed prison for $130 million. And the 300-bed prison has basically squeezed every single bed that they can count, including those in the sick bay and the transition accommodation.
In 2007 he told the estimates committee of this Assembly that that would give, in its current bed configuration, sufficient capacity for 25 years. We know that that is not true. He was saying that basically to cover the fact that they had got rid of the 74 beds which would have given us the capacity that we need in the jail.
The point I have made before, and I will keep making it, is that they knew at the time that the jail would not have the capacity because they said, in answer to a question on notice from Mr Seselja, that the capacity in 2009 would be 247 prisoners. Mr Corbell said to me in annual reports in November last year that they always knew that that would be the case, that it would be full at about 250; 245 in actual fact I think was the figure. Because of the difference between beds and the number of prisoners you can get in there, they always knew it was going to be full at about 245 or a measure like that.
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