Ms CARNEY - 2006-08-31
Today’s Northern Territory News has a headline on the front page that screams: ‘Crims Won’t be Jailed, and Prisoners Will Get Out Early’. We note there is nothing in the infrastructure budget for a new prison, yet there is millions for your commitment to the waterfront precinct. Do you agree o that housing criminals is a core function of government? Is it not the case that because you have signed the Territory up to non-core functions of government costing millions of dollars, you are left without adequate funds to house prisoners?
ANSWER
Madam Speaker, what a convoluted question. I will see if I can tackle bits of it. This bit about core and non-core business; we struggled with the questions last week, and we are trying to see some clear air. There is a continuity here. There is a certain continuity of seriously dumping on the waterfront, which is forty million dollars-worth of contracts for our businesses. All we hear from the Country Liberal Party, once so proud and strong about developing the Northern Territory, is them dumping on the waterfront.
To respond to that story in the Northern Territory News this morning, yes, government is doing work on what we do with our low level offenders. We have many options before us. It is a body of work that needs to be across government. I believe every Territorian would say to us that if you have people who have committed low level crimes and they are serving time for that, then they could do more valuable things for our community. We are housing them at taxpayers’ expense in the gaols when they could be doing community work and, importantly, for our level of recidivism, we could be better focusing training on those low level offenders.
We are working our way through it as a government. There are no decisions about new gaols or conditional release centres. We will make those decisions, but we are looking at, with low level offenders who have sentences for gaol, whether they should not be out working in our community, being visible and making a return.
I am very surprised that the opposition would be implicitly criticising us for it. I would say, good on you government, do more of this.
ANSWER
Madam Speaker, what a convoluted question. I will see if I can tackle bits of it. This bit about core and non-core business; we struggled with the questions last week, and we are trying to see some clear air. There is a continuity here. There is a certain continuity of seriously dumping on the waterfront, which is forty million dollars-worth of contracts for our businesses. All we hear from the Country Liberal Party, once so proud and strong about developing the Northern Territory, is them dumping on the waterfront.
To respond to that story in the Northern Territory News this morning, yes, government is doing work on what we do with our low level offenders. We have many options before us. It is a body of work that needs to be across government. I believe every Territorian would say to us that if you have people who have committed low level crimes and they are serving time for that, then they could do more valuable things for our community. We are housing them at taxpayers’ expense in the gaols when they could be doing community work and, importantly, for our level of recidivism, we could be better focusing training on those low level offenders.
We are working our way through it as a government. There are no decisions about new gaols or conditional release centres. We will make those decisions, but we are looking at, with low level offenders who have sentences for gaol, whether they should not be out working in our community, being visible and making a return.
I am very surprised that the opposition would be implicitly criticising us for it. I would say, good on you government, do more of this.
Last updated: 09 Aug 2016