Bills

Appropriation Bill 2014

Estimates Committees

Adjourned debate on motion:

That the proposed expenditures referred to Estimates Committees A and B be agreed to.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Before you commence, member for Morialta, we are having trouble with this gizmo, but there is a gizmo over here that we are all watching that gives you eight minutes. That gizmo is not working: this one is. We have you down for eight minutes, and you can send your deputy over if he wants to watch. Your time starts now.

Mr GARDNER (Morialta) (16:09): I cannot help but feel aggrieved because, at least in the old days when we had the ticking timer, we had something to keep an eye on.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: I know.

Mr GARDNER: I have so much I want to say that eight minutes is—

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! You are wasting ten seconds.

Mr GARDNER: Prior to the luncheon, question time, grievances and whatever that was from the minister's adjournment, I was talking about the prisoner numbers as opposed to total beds in South Australia. We had identified over 12 years of Labor that, especially after it had cancelled the public-private partnership in 2008-09 which saw, in fact, the government having to pay out $10 million to the private sector as a result of failure to meet that contract, the then deputy premier Kevin Foley said that the government was going to respond and deal with it by 'racking, packing and stacking' prisoners.

Well, for five years they have racked, they have packed, they have stacked and there is no longer any room to rack, pack and stack anymore. They have racked, packed and stacked as much as can be done and, in 2016, we have identified that the average daily prisoner population will supersede the approved capacity of the number of beds.

There are, in fact, a total of 65 surge beds and then 34 of what was described as 'additional surge beds', so I would assume that, given the nature of where they are at Holden Hill, Sturt and Port Augusta Prison infirmary, they are only a last resort. The watch house, which is the main surge venue, was occupied for 308 days last year. So, when we have actually got a higher average daily prisoner population than we have beds in the regular capacity, you can assume that the watch house will be full all the time.

At the same time, we have issues of staff cuts. So, there are significant problems with the capacity of prison numbers, and there is nowhere else to rack, pack and stack anyone. Mr Brown, the fine CEO of the department, identified that there are 1,696.6 FTE staff working in the department, and we know from the budget papers that the 2014-15 budget identifies that that will be cut to 1,632.3 staff. Minister Piccolo identified that there will be increased use of prisoner labour for some activities, so there will be savings of 12 to 15 FTEs through that.

There will be Community Corrections savings of 3.5 to 4.5 FTEs, and they are currently negotiating and reviewing the prison rosters from which they are hoping to save 26 to 34 FTEs. It was also identified that 25 trainees had just come online, so there certainly will not be the capacity to have any more trainees coming out in 12 months' time, otherwise they will breach their limit. So, that is where the 60 staff cuts are coming from, at a time when prisoner capacity is increasing to the point when it is going to be overflowing the prison beds available.

The minister identified no plan as to how to fix this problem. He identified what the problem was, and I am pleased that he was willing to admit that figure—it was one of the things that they did not take on notice—but there are no plans to fix it. We asked the question: is the government considering any plan that would involve using beds at either of the juvenile justice facilities at Cavan? While the minister said no, he refused to rule it out.

Two days later, having seen this issue come up in the Corrections estimates, knowing that this was a concern for the opposition, we had the minister responsible for youth justice (the honourable Minister for Communities and Social Inclusion) facing estimates. In her testimony, she was asked four times to rule it out. Four times, she was asked if she could rule it out. The closest we got was a referral to Peter Bull from the department that identified there were no plans to do so in the current financial year—the 2014 financial year.

I asked: what about future financial years? Mr Bull said that will be a policy decision for the government. Six times, we asked ministers in estimates to rule it out. It took until the following day, the Thursday on the radio, when minister Piccolo (the Minister for Correctional Services) was finally able to do so.

It was only as a result of this sincere questioning by the opposition that the government was able to rule out using our youth prisons, which are entirely inappropriate for holding prisoners sentenced as adults, but it took three days to get there, and we still do not have the plan for how they are going to manage the significant concerns about overcrowding and beds just not being available. I look forward to the government's response, and I am sure that the Treasurer looks forward to the application from the minister that is surely to come.

However, in the meantime, the minister has 60 staff cuts to make and no outlined definition, no agreement with the union and is not able to answer the union's concerns at this stage about where that is going to come from—sincere concerns. In fact, when the member for Bragg and I visited the Remand Centre last week one of the units we visited was locked down because of a lack of staffing in the space. It is all very well to keep increasing prisoner numbers, but the government has to face the critical crisis that is of its own making where it has cancelled the PPP, paid out the private company for not being able to go through with the PPP, and not having any long-term plan to manage the bed numbers.

One of the things that is critical in this space is rehabilitation, of course, and the reason rehabilitation is important is that ideally we would like to reduce the recidivism rate. We would like to try to use the time that people are in the prison—that is eight hours a day in their cell, potentially—to make them better members of society when they come out.

We identified that there were 65 people, I think, in the last financial year who undertook the three main rehabilitation programs: one of them is Making Changes, having a focus on substance abuse; one is the Violence Prevention Program, having a focus on murderers and other high level and serial violent offenders; and the other is the Sexual Behaviour Clinic, which speaks for itself.

However, the Abuse Prevention Program—identified on the department's website as being the key driver to fix problems related to offenders with domestic violence related offences—actually does not exist. It is on the website, but it is not in the prisons. This is of sincere concern, because there are many domestic violence related offenders in our prisons who we really need to be putting through a program such as this so that they are less likely to reoffend when they come out.

On the website it is identified as a 24-week program. When we asked about it in estimates it was identified as a 10-week program, actually not in the prisons but in Community Corrections, and it was only a pilot program that finished last year and they have not got around to finishing the evaluation as yet. There are sincere concerns in this area. The opposition is not satisfied that the government has any plan to deal with the concerns available.

We look forward to, in the coming months or maybe the coming years, seeing some sort of plan from the government. In the coming weeks we hope to see some sort of outcome to the negotiations with the union. Frankly, the minister needs to do a lot more before he is going to inspire confidence in the opposition or, indeed, in the community that he has any clue as to what he is doing.

Motion carried.

The Hon. S.E. CLOSE (Port Adelaide—Minister for Manufacturing and Innovation, Minister for Automotive Transformation, Minister for the Public Sector) (16:17): I move:

That the remainder of the bill be agreed to.

Motion carried.

Third Reading

The Hon. S.E. CLOSE (Port Adelaide—Minister for Manufacturing and Innovation, Minister for Automotive Transformation, Minister for the Public Sector) (16:17): I move—

An honourable member: That the bill be read a third time?

The Hon. S.E. CLOSE: I appreciate the bipartisan assistance. I move:

That this bill be now read a third time.

Bill read a third time and passed.