Adelaide Youth Training Centre

The Hon. R.A. SIMMS (14:52): I seek leave to make a brief explanation before addressing a question without notice to the Attorney-General on the report tabled on 11 November in the other place by the Training Centre Visitor and the Office of the Chief Psychiatrist.

Leave granted.

The Hon. R.A. SIMMS: The joint inspection of the mental health and wellbeing of children and young people detained at the Adelaide Youth Training Centre report details the conditions and practices at the Adelaide Youth Training Centre and the impact of these practices on the mental health and wellbeing of children and young people detained in that facility. The report identifies the use of physical and mechanical restraints at the Adelaide Youth Training Centre during 2023-24. To quote from the report:

Use of physical and mechanical restraints in AYTC is inconsistent with child-focused, trauma-informed standards, particularly those set out by [the Office of the Chief Psychiatrist] for mental health settings.

In the Training Centre Visitor's review of records from the Adelaide Youth Training Centre for 1 July 2023 to 30 June 2024, physical force was used on young people on 321 occasions in incidents or 68.7 per cent of the time that young people were involved in incidents, mechanical restraints were used on young people on 84 occasions in incidents or 18 per cent of the time that young people were involved in incidents and prone restraint was used on young people on 114 occasions in incidents or 24.6 per cent of the time that young people were involved in incidents. This is when a child is held facedown on the ground with their arms and legs held down by staff. To quote from the Chief Psychiatrist, Dr John Brayley, the use of prone restraint was among several 'significant areas of concern' at the detention facility. He said:

Internationally, this is recognised as a very risky form of restraint. It can lead to restraint asphyxia and potentially even death, so we do not believe that prone restraints should be used.

My question, therefore, to the Attorney-General is: can the Attorney-General update this place on South Australia's progress towards implementing the national prevention mechanism under the Optional Protocol to the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment to ensure that there is adequate oversight in South Australia's places of detention and when will the government respond to the recommendations made within this report and surely his government can do better than this?

The Hon. K.J. MAHER (Deputy Premier, Minister for Aboriginal Affairs, Attorney-General, Minister for Industrial Relations and Public Sector, Special Minister of State) (14:55): I will say a couple of things. Of course, the Youth Training Centre falls under the responsibility of the Minister for Human Services, the Hon. Nat Cook, but I am sure that she will be looking at the report by the Training Centre Visitor and looking at anything that needs to be implemented or changed or falls out from that. It does show the level of oversight that does occur in South Australia that a report such as this is tabled in our parliament.

In relation to the area that is partly within my portfolios but within other people's portfolios, the implementation of OPCAT in South Australia, I can say that we have no objection to its implementation in South Australia. In fact, I know from regular meetings with attorneys-general around Australia that that certainly has been, and I think still is, the case for most jurisdictions around Australia. There is no fundamental law or in principle objection to its implementation.

What is the case, though, is that I think it is unanimous amongst jurisdictions for a treaty that the federal government has signed up to that states are still awaiting the federal government's contribution to implementing OPCAT. So, as I said, we have no fundamental principled opposition to the implementation of the treaty that the federal government signed up to in OPCAT, but, given it is a decision of the federal government, I think all jurisdictions still need that funding from the federal government to make it happen.