Book 8 - Parliament of Victoria

STATEMENTS ON REPORTS AND PAPERS
Wednesday, 1 June 2011 COUNCIL 1661
In the justice portfolio the Auditor-General’s office has
flagged some work on court backlogs. With regard to
the government’s tough-on-crime approach, I note that
just yesterday we read in the papers and indeed talked
about the on-the-spot fines for offensive language. The
government has also floated the idea of mandatory
sentencing in some circumstances for minors. A great
many changes are being undertaken in Victoria at the
moment in the justice area. The way people have
speedy access to justice and to remedies through the
court system will be an area of focus for the
Auditor-General’s office.
Public transport performance is an important area, and
that is also in the report. The report also talks about the
Provincial Victoria Growth Fund. I imagine that work
will involve an examination of the appropriateness of
spending and the identification of priorities for the
Regional Growth Fund. That will certainly be of great
interest to me. There is also the implementation of the
climate change white paper and action on progress. The
government seems to be going backwards at a great rate
on this. Then there is the food bowl modernisation
project, including the Sugarloaf interconnector.
Government members have had a great deal to say
today about our water security infrastructure, so we will
have to wait and see.
This is a good report. Unlike the Baillieu-Ryan
government, the Auditor-General’s office has a work
plan for four years that I urge members to look at. The
Auditor-General is an independent officer of the
Parliament, as is the Ombudsman, and is enshrined as
an officer of the Parliament in the constitution. That is
quite a contrast to the approach that Mr Baillieu’s
mentor and friend Jeff Kennett and his government
took, which was to nobble the office of the
Auditor-General. This government does not talk the
same language.
The DEPUTY PRESIDENT — Order! The
member’s time has expired.
Drugs and Crime Prevention Committee:
impact of drug-related offending on female
prisoner numbers
Mrs COOTE (Southern Metropolitan) — It gives
me great pleasure to speak on the government’s
response to the Drugs and Crime Prevention
Committee’s report entitled Impact of Drug-related
Offending on Female Prisoner Numbers. This is a
comprehensive response, as was the interim report. As I
have said in this chamber before, this committee was
chaired by the former member for Essendon, Judy
Maddigan, and the committee did an excellent job. My
colleague Mr Leane, who is in the chamber here today,
was a part of that committee and also did an excellent
job.
It was an interesting inquiry, and although initially we
were looking at the drug issues in the female prisons,
we learnt a great deal about what is actually happening
in those female prisons. When I was speaking on
reports last week I spoke about the issue of appropriate
housing for women after they leave prison. Today I
would like to speak about the issue of women at
Tarrengower, particularly in relation to them keeping in
touch with their children.
Many women who go to prison find it difficult to
maintain their relationships with their children.
Tarrengower is a farm just outside Maldon. It is a
low-security prison for women who will eventually be
reintegrated back into the community, and it is highly
successful. Women can have their children to stay at
Tarrengower, and I might add they can also do so at the
Dame Phyllis Frost centre in Deer Park. Children up to
school age can live with their mothers in prison, should
the mothers feel they want that, and there are very good
programs run out of Dame Phyllis Frost for children in
the prison system. I remember it was a huge step when
it was first instigated many decades ago.
However, the problem we discovered when we went to
Tarrengower was that every telephone call the women
make to their children is in fact an STD call. The
women only get paid a small daily wage, and they are
faced with the dilemma of whether to ring their children
or to use the limited funds they earn for toiletries —
shampoo, health products et cetera. The
recommendation in the report is to subsidise either the
telephone calls or the toiletries.
The difficulty with this, which was something our
committee did not look at in great detail, or in fact even
recognise as an issue, was that there are inmates in
prisons right across our state who face a similar
dilemma. There are many men in country prisons who
want to maintain relationships with their children. To
have a blanket approach to contacting children from
prison is going to be quite an expensive exercise, so it is
important that it is done correctly. On the one hand we
want to support women so they have continuous
contact with their children. On the other hand we have
to be realistic with taxpayers money and make quite
certain that telephone calls are made responsibly. In its
reply to the interim report the government supported
this recommendation in part. Basically its reasons were
that it would be prohibitive to include all telephone
calls that prisoners — male and female — in country
areas make to their children.