Page 792 - Week 03 - Thursday, 2 April 2020
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pandemic situation that has emerged so rapidly. Nevertheless, in the time we have had and through the discussions we have had with government, the Greens believe the measures in this bill are reasonable and intended to mitigate unwanted outcomes as far as possible. They are premised on ensuring that a whole range of important and regulated processes, activities and services can operate appropriately under these pandemic conditions.
Many of these changes allow for activities to continue at an appropriate physical distance where previously the legislation did not contemplate the need for this. Several changes are made, for example, to the way courts operate to ensure that contact between people can be minimised.
The bill makes amendments to a number of acts. I will not list them all, but I note that the intention of the clauses is to allow for the operation of a number of processes which would otherwise not be able to operate in a COVID-safe environment, as well as responding to some of the potential negative impacts we have seen elsewhere around the world.
I want to focus on areas that are within my portfolio responsibility. The amendments to the Corrections Management Act 2007 expand the ability of the director-general to make a COVID-19 emergency declaration, grant local leave permits and extend the time frames for declaring an emergency. The act already has provisions in place for the declaring of emergencies, but these do not provide enough flexibility to allow the Commissioner for ACT Corrective Services to respond to the current emergency.
The bill amends section 26 of the Corrections Management Act to allow the director-general to declare that an emergency exists in relation to the correctional centre for the period associated with a COVID-19 public health emergency declaration. In effect, such declarations are made by the Commissioner for ACT Corrective Services.
The Corrections Management Act recognises that in certain extraordinary circumstances emergency measures are required to address the risks to detainees and good order. The power to declare an emergency is normally limited to three days at a time. The current duration of an emergency declaration and the extension to leave permits have been amended in the context of the expected duration of COVID-19 and ensure the need for certainty amongst detainees about the measures adopted.
Where a declaration is in place, the commissioner may take reasonable and necessary action to address the circumstances of the emergency, including restricting access to work or other activities, restricting access to parts of the centre and restricting a detainee’s access to another person. We know closed environments such as prisons, nursing homes and cruise ships are particularly susceptible to the spread of infectious diseases, and these amendments will ensure that all reasonable and practical measures can be sustained in the context of the prison environment.
I pick up on the comment Mrs Jones made that we are working in a very challenging environment. We need to protect the detainees from the disease as much as possible—that is why we have taken steps to limit visits to the AMC—but equally we need to
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