Page 3250 - Week 08 - Tuesday, 16 August 2011

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… we cannot be confident that all complaints were responded to adequately. Indeed, it is most concerning that several people claimed that some records of complaints ‘were destroyed’, ‘were not investigated’ or ‘went missing’.

On page 369 it is stated:

During 2010 there were several serious incidents at Bimberi that affected the well being of young people, but which were not documented in the segregation register, use of force register, or search register. These include:

Some young people were routinely placed in hand cuffs and ankle cuffs to move between buildings inside the grounds at Bimberi;

Two young people accessed medication that was not prescribed to them; and

One young person attempted suicide.

Minister, why is it that you allowed such failures in process as highlighted in the report to occur?

MS BURCH: Mr Speaker, without going into the detail of the pages that have just been read out, I will say first and foremost that, as I have said in response to a number of questions, the government will respond in full to this comprehensive report. We have about 60-odd days to respond. We have implemented a taskforce.

But can we also say that if I were to refer to page 2 a number of serious allegations were reported—

Mr Coe: She has got as far as page 2.

MS BURCH: I will go to this page—before and during the course of the review. In the most part, the commission was satisfied—

Mr Hanson: Mr Speaker—

MR SPEAKER: One moment, please, Ms Burch.

Mr Hanson: Mr Speaker, I have a point of order on relevance. I did refer to a number of specific pages—357, 374 and 369—and not to page 2. I would ask the minister to respond to the specific relevance of the question that I asked.

MR SPEAKER: Order! There is no point of order at this stage. Simply from my perspective I do not know whether page 2 addresses your questions or not; so I will allow the minister to continue.

MS BURCH: Thank you, Mr Speaker. It says that the commission was satisfied with the level of scrutiny provided by other external agencies to these incidents. However, they do highlight some issues of concern that warrant changes to policy and practice. This is discussed in the report.


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