Page 2929 - Week 10 - Tuesday, 13 August 2013

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to be located to identify who the detainees were and then seek to measure their recidivism rate.

The uncertain nature and the difficulty of finding this data certainly has the potential to undermine the accuracy of it. In addition to the considerable resources involved, I simply do not believe this is work that is warranted. We are now in a period where the Alexander Maconochie Centre has been open for long enough that accurate recidivism data is starting to come through. I think it is fair to say that this is data the government is very focused on. A key goal of the ACT government is to ensure people who come into custody do not come back into custody. That may not happen straight away, but certainly the considerable investment in the through-care program, which is providing support for people after they leave the AMC, is very much designed to maximise the likelihood of somebody not re-entering the corrections system or perhaps not re-entering it in such a severe way or not re-entering it as quickly as they might have in the past. I think we need to be realistic about some of the people who are brought into the corrections system. It will take some considerable work to help some of them put their lives back on track and to break the cycle of crime some people have found themselves in.

I should be quite clear that the rejection of this recommendation does not reflect the fact that the government is not focused on this issue but, rather, that the resources required to do it and the potential for inaccuracy make it unjustifiable. I would rather see those resources going to some of the other pressing issues the corrections system is facing. I will leave it at those few remarks for my responsibilities in the Justice and Community Safety Directorate.

Proposed expenditure agreed to.

Proposed expenditure—Part 1.11—Environment and Sustainable Development Directorate—$68,992,000 (net cost of outputs), $10,455,000 (capital injection) and $1,800,000 (payments on behalf of the territory) totalling $81,247,000.

MR COE (Ginninderra) (8.23): The Environment and Sustainable Development Directorate is of course a critical service delivery arm for the ACT government and one that I think the vast majority of Canberrans would have contact with, whether they know it or not. The impact of the decisions made in the directorate will, ultimately, physically shape our city and surrounds. It is for that reason that it is absolutely vital that the government get the policy settings spot on when it comes to this very important directorate.

The ESD Directorate, I think, is perhaps somewhat unique in that it has the old ACTPLA statutory authority incorporated within it. This is of course a statutory authority that Simon Corbell, as an opposition member, championed. He championed the need to have a chief planner and of course now he has, in effect, done away with that goal which he had when he was on this side of the chamber 12 or 13 years ago.

The issue of a single nature conservation agency is one that the opposition raised during the estimates process and in other fora since and before. We think that this is something worth pursuing and we know that there are many community groups—and


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