Mr KIELY - 2003-06-17
Every day as you go down Mitchell Street you cannot help notice the great work that is going on with the Police Station and the signage going up. Against a lot of odds, I think we have been doing pretty well there. Can you please advise the House on the progress of the fitout for the new Darwin Police Station?
ANSWER
Madam Speaker, that facility at Mitchell Street is taking over the landscape there. Whilst I am on my feet, I pay tribute to a friend of mine who is the architect on that particular job, Col Brown from Jackman Gooden Architects, who is doing a magnificent job. He did the extension on my house and some of the colour schemes are the same, so I am taking a very personal interest in that particular facility. I digress.
Our police will be taking over the new police facility in about 10 days’ time. We are looking forward to hosting an open day for the public in the next few weeks to show the magnificent new police facility in the heart of Darwin. This government has put significant money into the fit out of that facility, unlike our predecessors, who did not put one cent towards it. When we came to government, my colleague, the member for Nhulunbuy, was the original minister who had carriage of this. We found that the design was pretty poor and shoddy, unsafe and unusable. One of the design flaws that we inherited and had to fix up was that prisoners and members of the public had to share the same lift. I do not think that that is very appropriate and, potentially, would endanger the public. The police brought to our attention, in terms of the airconditioning design, that air from the cells would be recycling through the common police work areas, and one can only begin to imagine what that would have been like for our police trying to work under those conditions. There were other basic design flaws such as no back-up generator facility.
We made an absolute commitment to fix this facility up. This budget has allocated $2.1m to fitting out this new facility in the heart of Darwin to provide the police with the best in services and facilities, and ensuring that our police can do the job that we expect them to do and the public will be protected.
As minister for Police, I have had the opportunity to tour many of our police stations across the Northern Territory, both in our regional centres and in the bush. I can say that I am not happy with the condition of some of those police stations. Many of them are very run down and have not seen much maintenance over the years. I am committed to a progressive upgrade of those facilities. This budget is putting significant money into their upgrading.
Our police deserve good facilities to work from, the public deserve safe facilities in those police stations, and we have allocated $2.1m to upgrade the facility that we inherited. We are very much looking forward to the open day in a few weeks time where we can show Territorians what a magnificent new facility we have.
ANSWER
Madam Speaker, that facility at Mitchell Street is taking over the landscape there. Whilst I am on my feet, I pay tribute to a friend of mine who is the architect on that particular job, Col Brown from Jackman Gooden Architects, who is doing a magnificent job. He did the extension on my house and some of the colour schemes are the same, so I am taking a very personal interest in that particular facility. I digress.
Our police will be taking over the new police facility in about 10 days’ time. We are looking forward to hosting an open day for the public in the next few weeks to show the magnificent new police facility in the heart of Darwin. This government has put significant money into the fit out of that facility, unlike our predecessors, who did not put one cent towards it. When we came to government, my colleague, the member for Nhulunbuy, was the original minister who had carriage of this. We found that the design was pretty poor and shoddy, unsafe and unusable. One of the design flaws that we inherited and had to fix up was that prisoners and members of the public had to share the same lift. I do not think that that is very appropriate and, potentially, would endanger the public. The police brought to our attention, in terms of the airconditioning design, that air from the cells would be recycling through the common police work areas, and one can only begin to imagine what that would have been like for our police trying to work under those conditions. There were other basic design flaws such as no back-up generator facility.
We made an absolute commitment to fix this facility up. This budget has allocated $2.1m to fitting out this new facility in the heart of Darwin to provide the police with the best in services and facilities, and ensuring that our police can do the job that we expect them to do and the public will be protected.
As minister for Police, I have had the opportunity to tour many of our police stations across the Northern Territory, both in our regional centres and in the bush. I can say that I am not happy with the condition of some of those police stations. Many of them are very run down and have not seen much maintenance over the years. I am committed to a progressive upgrade of those facilities. This budget is putting significant money into their upgrading.
Our police deserve good facilities to work from, the public deserve safe facilities in those police stations, and we have allocated $2.1m to upgrade the facility that we inherited. We are very much looking forward to the open day in a few weeks time where we can show Territorians what a magnificent new facility we have.
Last updated: 09 Aug 2016