Wilkinson Kate: Financial Review Debate — In Committee 
Wilkinson Kate: Financial Review Debate — In Committee 
[Volume:637;Page:7943] 
KATE WILKINSON (National) 
: 
 The year 2004-05 certainly was not a good year for the Department of Corrections. It was as my colleague has said a year of budget blowouts corruption parole disasters rehabilitation failures—you name it the department has had it. Yet remarkably the department’s hands are clean and not a smidgen of blame will the department accept. 
We have heard that the State Services Commission report into cost escalation stated there were “a number of areas where the department failed to meet acceptable standards.” That is not satisfactory and that is not good; that is a failure. 
This year we learnt about collaborative working arrangements. These are strange contractual beasts whereby contractors do not submit fixed price quotes and there is no control on cost escalation. The taxpayer pays the price and the taxpayer takes the risk. There is absolutely no incentive to complete the project within budget because there is no budget. These collaborative working arrangements are totally open-ended commercially stupid and unacceptable. Even Treasury expressed unease about these collaborative working arrangements. The States Services Commission itself warned that “it appeared that the benefits of the arrangement were emphasised to a much greater extent than the potential risks and costs.” So what happened? The obvious happened. The cost of constructing these four new prisons escalated to $890 million—an additional $490 million which was nearly twice as much again. 
To make matters worse if one thinks they can be worse—they do get worse—the person responsible for introducing these collaborative working arrangements was paid $1.3 million. Consultants employed to bring efficiency to the construction project cost $455000 in the first 5 months alone. When we have a blowout of $490 million I would have thought that the person responsible for introducing that blowout should not be paid $1.3 million and that consultants employed to bring efficiency who have obviously failed should not have cost the project an additional $455000. This has not been the year of accountability for the Department of Corrections. 
Contraband has increased. Those completing rehabilitation courses are more likely to reoffend than those who did not attend those courses. More prisoners are offending while on community work schemes. There are more lawsuits from prisoners and they are claiming $8.6 million for some maltreatment. There are 43 grievance claims by staff so far but on the other side $2 million was paid in staff bonuses. There was $31 million spent on consultants. There are fewer prisoners on drug rehabilitation programmes and fewer prisoners working. There is five times more methamphetamine in prisons. And the list goes on and on. 
Hard on the heels of the Liam Ashley tragedy we have another tragedy Graeme Burton. He was released on parole under the supervision of the Department of Corrections. The core business of the department remember includes the management of parole and the department failed. Graeme Burton committed heinous offences whilst on parole. He breached parole yet the department’s chief executive officer said: “We have complied with all our procedures in terms of the management of his probation.” then said insensitively as we have heard that there was no blood on his hands. He said he acted within the required 7 days. But something went wrong something went horribly wrong and somebody must be responsible. During and as a result of that inaction—that denial of responsibility that lack of acceptance of any accountability—an innocent man was murdered a family was robbed of its father and husband and other innocent persons were hurt. 
The worst of it all is that this tragedy could and should have been averted. The next worst of it all is that lessons could at least have been learnt from this tragedy but not whilst there is such a state of denial—the “It’s not my fault.” mentality. I ask the Minister of Corrections to take some responsibility be accountable and do something to halt the trend of tragedies.