Page 1132 - Week 04 - Wednesday, 25 March 2015
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Notwithstanding all of these efforts, it remains the unfortunate case that contraband still enters the AMC on occasions. I am not happy about this, any more than Mr Wall is, but I am confident we are working hard to reduce breaches of this nature. We are very much aware that there is not, to the best of my knowledge, a single jail in Australia that is not also battling the same issues.
Other jurisdictions also employ a range of security measures, yet, as with the AMC, contraband continues to be a problem in prisons. Perhaps Mr Wall would like to have another look at the issues arising in other jurisdictions. I know he spoke particularly about New South Wales today, but I believe he will find many examples that illustrate my point.
I will not name the states in each of the following cases, but I can refer members to media reports of a detainee making a staggering 19,523 calls in six weeks in one jurisdiction; and there was the correctional service that seized 622 mobile phones, chargers and SIM cards between 1 January 2009 and 30 June 2013. Neither of those occurred in the ACT. Then there were perhaps the more ambitious attempts of a man who was charged after allegedly trying to fly drugs into a maximum security prison using a remote drone. This simply indicates how desperate and creative some of our detainees can be.
The motion before us specifically mentions the mobile phone jamming trial that has occurred in the Lithgow prison in New South Wales. I note Mr Wall has lauded the efforts of his political colleagues in the Nationals and Liberals in the New South Wales government. It is worth noting that the project to identify suitable jamming technology commenced more than 10 years ago in New South Wales, at a time when the coalition was out of office, and would be for some years.
To ensure that the Assembly is under no illusion as to the credentials of all political parties in supporting increased security and phone jamming in New South Wales prisons, I note that it was under Bob Carr and Labor that the first work began on this trial, and subsequently another three Labor premiers—Morris Iemma, Nathan Rees and Kristina Keneally—carried the work forward from 2002 to 2011. Barry O’Farrell, of course, then became the Liberal Premier for a number of years, and now the Liberal Premier Mike Baird has held the job for just under a year.
It is hardly fair to single out any one party or another when you look at those numbers. That undermines the very credibility of Mr Wall’s motion—the fact that he failed to acknowledge the actual history of that trial, or it reflects the fact that he does not know as much about it as he possibly should. Hopefully today we will fill in some of those blanks.
I could, of course, also talk about the shifting changes in federal politics that the Lithgow trial has quietly seen come and go over the years, given that a number of federal authorities play a role in the regulation of communications technology. But I think that would be somewhat of a digression.
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