Burton Mark: Corrections (Mothers with Babies) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Burton Mark: Corrections (Mothers with Babies) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:632;Page:4034] 
Hon MARK BURTON (Minister of Justice) 
: 
 I am pleased to speak to the Corrections (Mothers with Babies) Amendment Bill on behalf of the Labour Party and the Government. This sort of bill which comes into Parliament from time to time brings out the best in the debates we have in the House and I commend the member who has just resumed her seat Katherine Rich. I do not think anyone in the House could disagree with the underlying principles espoused by Katherine Rich and Sue Bradford the member whose bill we are debating. 
The issues the bill puts before us are worthy of wide discussion and consultation and an opportunity for us to hear from wide expert opinion and community interests. The Government certainly will be supporting the bill going to the Law and Order Committee but Sue Bradford and Katherine Rich both raised a number of significant and important issues and questions. There can be no doubt that bonding and attachment between mother and child are fundamental to the issues that we cannot avoid discussing when we consider the bill. Certainly the proposal we have shifts from the current arrangement which effectively has an upper age-limit for babies who are with their mothers in prison. Again I emphasise that the current legislation recognises not only the importance of the opportunity to establish and maintain breastfeeding in its own right but also bonding. It is important to acknowledge that both of those factors are taken into account. 
As the members have said the bill would provide for the increase in the upper age-limit for babies in prisons to 24 months and that does raise a number of significant questions. The bill is timely for a number of reasons. I acknowledge the Department of Corrections which was planning to undertake a review of the woman and dependent child policy in the 2006-07 year. So this bill comes at an opportune time from that point of view. As part of that review it was the intention that the current age-limit for babies in prisons in light of the literature that has been previously referred to on child development and attachment to primary caregivers would be part of the consideration during that review. So again the timing of that review given the obvious consideration that it will have in the select committee lines up well. 
Of course extending the age-limit suggests a number of important and challenging issues some of which have already been canvassed and I will echo them here. For instance there is a challenge relating to the capacity to meet the child development needs of the child in prison because as the member who has just resumed her seat indicated this is as much about a baby and his or her developmental needs and rights as it is about the mother in question and the bonding between them. There is no doubt that there will be new challenges to be addressed in that regard. Potentially—for some at least—there is the question of dealing with separation at an older age because in some cases it may be that a mother who is serving a longer sentence may be forced to confront the same issue at age 2 rather than at 6 months. Certainly some literature would suggest that the issues are at least as serious at that point albeit different. Practical support for mothers in that situation would be quite different if we went out to a 2-year timeline. 
There are security issues. Basically self-care units are minimum security at the moment. If we extend virtually without control the number of mothers who might be eligible then we raise issues around security that currently do not necessarily need to be addressed. There are a number of other issues not least of which is the resourcing issue. It would be good to be able to say the issue is too important to allow ourselves to be sidetracked by such mundane things as money but sadly that is never the case in Government and I think none of us in this House should pretend that we can simply make decisions in a financial vacuum—we cannot. So resourcing issues would be real and would have to be considered. But as I said at the outset the Government will support the bill going to the select committee. We look forward to hearing wide-ranging debate and I thank members for their consideration of the bill.