Corrections Amendment Bill

Members, we now come to Part 2. This is the debate on clauses 48 to 57, “Amendments to Corrections Regulations 2005”. The question is that Part 2 stand part.

Thank you, Madam Chair. As is the nature of this bill, there’s probably just a couple of quick questions—and I don’t expect that the Minister will have any problems being able to just kind of answer them back and forth—nothing terribly in depth, but around the theme of, I suppose, a collection of things that are, essentially, new duties or certainly require work, and I would just like to check with the Minister about what that means in a practical kind of arrangement.

If we look at clause 54, “Regulation 113 amended (Visits not to be recorded without necessary approvals)”—and I suppose just as an example, “Subclause (1) does not forbid the use of security surveillance cameras or other technology in a prison if—(a) the cameras or other technology—(i) record only visual images; or (ii) record sound and visual images for an intelligence purpose under subpart 4A of Part 2 of the Act; and (b) notices are predominantly displayed in visiting areas that inform visitors that they are in use [around] those areas.” That has a practical implication, certainly in terms of people performing duties and resources, but when I looked at the regulatory impact statement, which I know the Minister would have read, the Ombudsman, for one, and some submitters certainly looked at whether—given resource constraints that were there at the time, let alone now—a more targeted approach to that would have been appropriate.

The regulatory impact statement certainly says that “Corrections is currently unable to identify all mail that should be withheld due to a lack of resources” and goes on to say similar things about the ability to monitor all phone calls. By making this amendment to this bill and increasing the surveillance, the monitoring, and broadening the definition of communications for an intelligence purpose, did the Minister consider utilising that in a more targeted way or can he kind of just provide us with a little bit more clarity about the practical applications of how that might work?

I’m happy to go on to ask another quick question just whilst that percolates for a wee bit: if we sort of skip over and look at clause 55, “Regulation 119A”, there’s a suite of amendments related to, essentially, just changing the wording from “non-lethal” to “less-lethal”. That was something that was discussed in select committee as not only just kind of modernising it because the terminology has changed but also, as was discussed yesterday, it was descriptive rather than criticism. Because things can be lethal, we shouldn’t term anything that’s used in that environment fait accompli as being non-lethal. The suite of changes that go through those regulations—I just wondered, did the Minister have any thoughts or was there any discussion that we might not be privy to about whether that’s something that constantly needs to be updated or is that the sort of term du jour and are we kind of futureproofing it, therefore, if we choose to go down that path?

The third question that I had, just sort of off the top of my head, was if we look at clause 57, “Schedule 7 amended”, new clause 24A, “Clauses 23 and 24 are subject to sections 133A and 138A of the Act.”, that relates to amendments to privileges that can proceed without prisoners being present. Again, there’s a suite of sort of changes there, but I think it would be handy if the Minister had any kind of comment, again, on how that might relate to the ability to perform those duties given that a lot of that back-office staff have been cut. That’s where the cost savings really did hit, in so far as finding the bulk of those cost savings were, by definition, in back-office staff because most of the staff in Corrections are front-office staff. If the Minister had any comment along those lines in terms of being able to practically carry out these things in that environment, that would be much appreciated.

I thank the member for those questions. Look, the reality of it is, as you can see in the regulations, that the interception and monitoring of communications is taken really seriously by Corrections for both the safety of the staff, the safety of the prisoners, and also public safety. That’s why there’s got to be robust measures in place in terms of how that’s done. It’s got to be prescriptive, and it is. In terms of capacity, look, I agree with you that when the system is under stress, then of course you have to start prioritising, and this has been one of the big challenges without a doubt that Corrections has had to deal with and they’ve done a very good job of dealing with that.

The good news is that we’re now seeing some very good results. We’re well above the rate of attrition. I’ve visited many of the offices that actually deal with this work. They’re well staffed, they’re very professional, they’re outstanding and very efficient in the way that they approach their role.

In terms of the switch from “non-lethal” to “less-lethal”, I think the member herself did a very good job of explaining why we had to do that, because although we all know what we mean when we say “non-lethal”, the reality of it is this is not a perfect world we live in and we cannot guarantee that one of those non-lethal methods couldn’t result in a death. That has prompted, along with some recommendations that have come out of the UN, the change to “less-lethal”.

Tamatha Paul’s amendments to Part 2 set out on Amendment Paper 82 are out of order as being inconsistent with a previous decision of the committee—Amendment Paper 82, Part 1. Tamatha Paul’s amendments to Part 2 set out on Amendment Paper 83 are out of order as being inconsistent with a previous decision of the committee—Amendment Paper 83, Part 1.