Huo RaymondRAYMOND HUO (Labour): Thank you Madam Deputy Speaker. The beauty or agony of listening to the contributions of the National members of the Parliament is that they're willing to talk about anything but the bill. The Hon David Bennett is usually a good member but—[Interruption] I am too kind—barking at every parked car has become a new normal. So that's the reason. Let's get back to the bill. This is one of the 20 bills that the extraordinarily busy Justice Committee has considered. The Corrections Amendment Bill introduces a number of changes and many of those changes are minor adjustments to the principal Act and do not fundamentally change the way people in custody are managed or how the prisons are operated. The purpose of this bill is to promote operational best practice or technology advances in the corrections system and also to clarify some legal ambiguities. I thank the officials advisers the Parliamentary Counsel Office and of course the submitters. We received and considered 17 submissions from interested groups and individuals and we heard oral evidence from eight submitters. There are a number of issues that are worth noting: first of all the powers and functions of health centre managers. Clause 6 of the bill provides the authority for health centre managers to delegate their powers and functions but delegation can only be to a registered doctor or nurse. The current proposal in the bill was developed to address a particular situation where health centre managers are not on site such as weekends and evenings—that part is reasonably easy to understand. However the introduction of a new model of care for prisoners who are at risk of self-harm has highlighted the limitations with the current provisions for delegation. For example there may be instances where the regular health centre manager may not be the most appropriate person to provide mental health advice and instead they may wish to partially delegate the powers and functions relating to mental health services to someone with a mental health background on an ongoing basis. Under the new model for care for prisoners who are at risk of self-harm other mental health professionals such as psychologists or psychotherapists may be employed. However as currently drafted a delegation could only occur if someone is a registered doctor or nurse. This is obviously an oversight. The Department of Corrections advised the committee and the Justice Committee followed their advice and recommended introducing new provisions to enable the health centre managers to delegate to a broad range of health professionals. Instead of the term in the bill as introduced we are going to replace the reference to a registered doctor or nurse with the new term registered health professional". "Registered health professional" is already a defined term in the principal Act. The second issue is with regard to the review of mother and baby placement decisions. Since September 2011 the Act has provided for mothers with children who are less than 24 months old to be able to apply to have those children with them in prison. The chief executive of the department has a statutory authority to approve a mother's request to have her child in prison. However if an application for such a placement is declined or if it is decided to end such a placement there's no statutory right to appeal the decision. The bill addresses this issue by introducing a statutory review process. We recommend amending the bill by requesting that the department tell a mother the reason why an application was denied or why a placement has ended as well as the process for having such a review and for having such a decision be reconsidered. There are other matters that I wish to talk about more at some later stage of the debate such as imaging technology searches to detect contraband prisoners' knowledge of disciplinary offences and also the prisoners' right to write letters and their potential implications for certain people—for instance for those who have protection orders under the Domestic Violence Act 1995. I commend the bill to the House."