Page 3083 - Week 10 - Wednesday, 24 September 2014
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Those were the words of Mr Hanson. In 2014 the situation is the same. There are still a number of operational issues affecting Canberra’s jail. The ACT Labor-Greens government is spending almost $170,000 per year per prisoner, more than 56 per cent above the national average. To add to this, the spending has continued, with another $1.2 million being spent in 2012-13 alone to assist in “meeting operational costs” of the prison, with little focus on improving efficiencies.
The frustration is that, despite the expenditure, the outcomes continue to be poor for ACT prisoners. The AMC has the highest rates of serious assaults within the prisoner population in the country. Prisoners in the ACT are five times more likely to be involved in a serious assault than the rest of Australia. ACT prisoners are also spending less time out of their cells on a daily basis with lockdowns due to a staff shortage a regular occurrence.
We have recently seen publicly that contraband in the jail is a continuing problem. Only last month the public were exposed to what goes on inside the jail, as a fist fight between inmates over what was probably a drugs or a contraband-related dispute was broadcast over the internet. There is a continuing legacy of violence at the AMC, both between prisoners and prisoners and prisoners and corrections officers. The question that we need to ask is: how do we try and stem these activities with a view to stopping them altogether? What assurance can we have that this government can manage as significant a shift in policy as an NSP if they cannot get the basics of running a correctional institution right?
The ACT should not continually be called upon to be the crash test dummies for ideologically driven policy or for policy that is at the behest of the solitary Green here in the Assembly and holder of the balance of power. No other state or territory is willing to pursue this kind of program in their jails. Why should we again be the first?
The ACT government continues to ignore those individuals at the coalface who remain vehemently opposed to the introduction of a needle and syringe program at the Alexander Maconochie Centre. Prison officers and their union representatives have long voiced their opposition to an NSP. Theirs is a powerful argument, an argument that is centred on the safety of the workforce. They are the ones that have the intimate knowledge of how the prison environment works. They are all too aware that a blood-filled syringe could, and most likely would, become the weapon of choice and the staff would be almost powerless in combating these incidents.
On 12 September this year Alistair Waters, the deputy national president of the Community and Public Sector Union, wrote, in relation to the union’s rejection of the plan to introduce an NSP in our jail:
Prison staff have a reputation for toughness and discipline but they also care. They want to do the best job for those they are responsible for and go home to their families at night. They should be able to expect the full support of the Labor Government. At the very least, their questions should be answered not ignored or denigrated.
I think that sentence says it all. They should be able to expect the full support of the Labor Party. Sadly, in this instance they cannot. There is no doubt that the needles
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