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Legislative Council - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, Second Session (54-2)
2020-12-02 Daily Xml
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Question Time

Adelaide Remand Centre

The Hon. K.J. MAHER (Leader of the Opposition) (14:24): I seek leave to make a brief explanation before asking a question of the Treasurer regarding privatisation.

Leave granted.

The Hon. K.J. MAHER: During public debates about the privatisation of the Adelaide Remand Centre in September 2018, the Treasurer publicly said:

We think the public are entitled to expect that their safety will be protected, and that also the safety of prisoners will be protected.

The Treasurer also said, 'It's a commonsense decision, it's in the interests of community safety'. The Treasurer went on to say:

You don't want to have a situation where there might be, in the worst possible set of circumstances, rioting and escapes, or anything like that.

My question to the Treasurer is: what do you say to those South Australians who can now see how the privatisation—your privatisation—of the Adelaide Remand Centre has compromised community safety, and we have in fact ended up, in your own words, 'in the worst possible set of circumstances'?

The Hon. R.I. LUCAS (Treasurer) (14:25): The outsourcing of the Adelaide Remand Centre is entirely consistent with the statements I have made on behalf of the government previously, and certainly I stand by them. The outsourcing has been in the public interest, as was the outsourcing of the Mount Gambier Prison 25 years ago, which was reindorsed, resubmitted, by Labor correctional services ministers.

I will need to check the record, but I think one of them might actually have been the Leader of the Opposition in another place, when he was given the opportunity to either take it back into the public sector or to continue the outsource provision in the public interest—

Members interjecting:

The PRESIDENT: Order!

The Hon. R.I. LUCAS: —for the people of South Australia. The new government's position is entirely consistent with the former government's position and entirely consistent with the position of the Liberal government back in the 1990s.

Members interjecting:

The PRESIDENT: Order! The Hon. Mr Wortley will come to order.

The Hon. R.I. LUCAS: We do not resile in one fact at all.

The Hon. D.W. Ridgway: Show him the door.

The PRESIDENT: And so will the Hon. Mr Ridgway.

The Hon. R.I. LUCAS: We don't resile at all from statements we have made defending that the outsourcing arrangements the government has entered into are in the public interest.

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