Page 3399 - Week 11 - Wednesday, 23 September 2015
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Subsequent to this a project is underway within Corrective Services to review the majority of policies and procedures made under the Corrections Management Act 2007 to ensure that these policies and procedures are updated and aligned with improved practices that have been made to corrections operations. Secondly, in 2013 ACT Corrective Services established the Corrections Psychological Support Services Unit. This new unit, based at the AMC, ensures that there is adequate provision of recovery-focused service delivery in partnership with ACT justice health and I think that has been a particularly successful initiative because we are now consistently seeing the Crisis Support Unit at the AMC not full. If you go back 18 months or so it was consistently at its peak capacity and we now regularly have spaces available in that unit as a result of the work being undertaken by the Corrections Psychological Support Services Unit, for example.
Corrections is also committed to undertaking a comprehensive evaluation of the ground-breaking extended through-care project and there will undoubtedly be ongoing learning from these and allied initiatives. These are just a couple of examples of the sorts of improvements that are being done by Corrective Services, with my support, my encouragement and my leadership on some of these issues to make sure that we are making improvements. As I said earlier, that is where I want to focus my energy and that is where I want the Corrective Services staff to be focused. Yes we can have another review but actually we have had plenty of reviews. They have given us some clear findings and we should focus on implementing those.
While none of the examples I have just given may seem relevant at first glance to Mr Wall's motion, they are relevant and they show how we manage the corrections system here in Canberra. The jail does not exist as a simple holding pen—far from it. Our jail is proudly focused on community safety and rehabilitation and by taking a multi-pronged approach to maintaining good order we can address a range of issues including contraband and illicit substances.
If Mr Wall ever has the privilege of being more than just an opposition spokesperson on these issues I hope that he will have more trust in and respect for the management of the ACT's only jail and take a more intelligent and sophisticated approach to the challenges presented. Nothing is simple in this area and the job requires an appreciation of the many moving parts of the system. ACT Corrective Services are doing this well and they have my ongoing support to meet this challenging task. The government will not be supporting this motion today.
MR WALL (Brindabella) (12.22), in reply: It is disappointing but not surprising that we have the minister here again today taking a leaf out of the book of one of his counterparts. He has virtually got his fingers in his ears, with his eyes closed, saying, “La, la, la, la, la, no problem, nothing to see here, let’s move on.” He said he did not even see this motion on something constructive as worthy of support or of amendment. As I said, this is not surprising.
Mr Rattenbury pointed to issues that occur in other jurisdictions, and he is right. Drugs are a problem in all jail facilities. Contraband is a problem in all correctional facilities and the people who are spending time inside jails have a significant amount of time on their hands to come up with ways to circumvent and deceive the security
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