The State’s Corrections Minister David Elliot has reinforced his opposition to a second Goulburn prison during a visit to the city.
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David Elliot made the comments after announcing on Thursday that work had begun on a $47 million high-security unit at Goulburn Correctional Centre to house 48 inmates. He was in town as part of the Community Cabinet meeting.
Mr Elliot said he was “completely” ruling out a proposal by Southern Infrastructure Pty Ltd to build an 1800-bed jail on a 263 hectare site off Mountain Ash Road. He told The Post the government would not support either a privately or publicly operated facility, even in scaled down form.
Southern Infrastructure’s director Paul Watson has reduced the number of beds originally proposed from 5600 to 1800 in response to government statements. He is submitting a revised unsolicited bid to the government.
But Mr Elliot is not interested.
“I’m very confident with the investment we’re making here (Goulburn Correctional Centre) and we wouldn’t be making it if we thought we’d go to a private prison,” he said on Thursday.
Mr Elliot also rejected Mr Watson’s earlier comments that the government’s regional infrastructure had “encouraged” him to lodge the unsolicited bid for the jail. Instead, he said Mr Watson was simply advised of the process if he wanted to do so.
But Goulburn man and Labor Party member Bob Stephens said the government shouldn’t dismiss the idea “out of hand.”
Mr Stephens had a 50 per cent share in the Mountain Ash Road land when Mariner Financial Ltd was proposing to build a $1 billion freight and logistics hub on the site. Mr Watson worked on that proposal until Mariner struck financial trouble and the plan was abandoned.
Mr Stephens says he has no financial interest in Mr Watson’s current jail concept and describes him as a family friend.
“When he was putting together the plan, he came and talked to me and (wife) Ursula and he wanted to know who to contact. We were only too happy to help especially because they’re doing all this benchmarking at Goulburn jail, which is all about cost saving and cutting jobs,” he said.
“...We won’t know the results of the review for another month but even if one job is lost, it’s bad news on the back of the 10 already lost there.”
Mr Stephens argued that modern prisons, like the one Mr Watson’s consortium was planning, cost far less per prisoner per day than aged facilities, like Goulburn’s. He maintained that the State would be 6000 prison beds short by 2020 and there was nothing in place to address this.
“If Paul Watson’s bid goes some way to doing that then I wish him all the best because it would be a bonus for Goulburn for many years to come,” he said.
Bid documents state that the consortium would form a partnership with the not-for-profit Community Plus Inc, which Dr Ursula Stephens founded and chairs, now at Workspace 2580. Its role would be to support a community consultative group and consultants “involved in local project planning and delivery stages.”
Dr Stephens said Community Plus first heard about the proposed prison complex via a similar not-for-profit organisation doing work at Grafton for the new jail project there.
“They passed our information on to the proponents who included it in their document,” she said.
“I have no vested interest in the proposal, other than wanting to see appropriate social infrastructure being incorporated into any planning for the prison population, their families and supporting services - whether that be the new Supermax 2 which has been announced, or any new prison proposed for the region.
“As a capacity building organisation, we would like to see investment in programs to reduce the prison population, but that can’t happen under current sentencing and bail conditions, and mandatory sentencing. It can only be achieved by community based, diversionary, drug and alcohol and mental health programs that help keep people out of the prison system in the first place.”
Mr Stephens said he and Dr Stephens would only support Mr Watson’s bid if it was publicly run. Mr Watson is resubmitting the plan in this form. The Goulburn Branch of the Labor Party has also taken this view.
Asked whether Labor would make an election issue of the second jail and benchmarking at the current facility, Mr Stephens told The Post they would wait to see the results of the benchmarking review.
However in a letter to the editor, Dr Stephens wrote it was “premature to dismiss a modern correctional facility if it was government run and staffed.”
“Let’s find out the facts before putting our heads in the sand and at the same time, support the prison officers who work, live and contribute to our community,” she wrote.
Dr Stephens has not declared whether she’ll stand as a candidate against sitting Liberal MP Pru Goward, as she did in 2015. On Friday she said party nominations would open soon and she was considering her options.
While she said she couldn’t predict what Labor would do with benchmarking, she was aware that the Prison Officers Vocational Branch was very concerned about job cuts and privatisation.
Benchmarking delay
Meantime, on Thursday, Corrective Services Assistant Commissioner Kevin Corcoran confirmed the benchmarking review, which was due on February 28, had been delayed. The process sets performance targets on out of cell hours, programs to reduce recidivism, sick leave, number of health issues addressed and more.
Mr Corcoran said Corrective Services was still looking at its staffing structure because it hadn’t finalised design for the High Risk Management Unit.
“We won’t know final staffing numbers for a week or two and then we’ll release them to the governor and probably in a month, to the staff, so I can’t say precisely whether there will be any job losses,” he said.
“But certainly with benchmarking we are reforming the middle management and we are looking at a way of operating things more effectively. Certainly there will be changes to the jobs around and we’re hoping to come up with a solution that will result in minimal job losses.”
Mr Corcoran said the department was trying to ensure benchmarking didn’t produce “adverse results” for the regions. Moreover, it was designed to achieve “more efficient and effective operation and consistency.”
He told media there was no blanket approach and each facility was considered individually.
The Prison Officers Vocational Branch has branded it a cost and job cutting exercise that would have dangerous consequences in an already overcrowded jail.
However Mr Elliot dismissed this as “spin dished up by the union.”
“We’re employing 2000 corrections officers over four years so it is a growth industry. Don’t mix benchmarking with anything else; it is about making jails more efficient,” he said.
The Minister said staff numbers in Supermax wouldn’t be touched.
He told The Post that Goulburn Correctional Facility was “on capacity”, but was not the worst in the State. No inmates would be moved from Goulburn to reduce numbers. He said he was confident with new prisons under construction and a $237 million investment in rehabilitation programs, that the State’s inmate numbers would reduce.