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LNP corrective services spokesman John-Paul Langbroek said the party had referred the matter to the auditor-general. The auditor-general's office has confirmed it received the LNP's request but as of Monday morning, it was yet to view the details. Mr Langbroek argues the government did not conduct a proper tendering process. June 3, The Daily Telegraph A SAFETY order was issued to the federal government less than three weeks before riots broke out at the Villawood detention centre, warning that sections of the facility posed a serious safety and security risk.
The Improvement Notice issued by Comcare, and tabled in Parliament on Wednesday, also warned the detention centre at the time could not cope with transfers of potentially violent asylum seekers from Christmas Island. It said Villawood had a "lower level" of health and safety and security. It also discovered broken and missing security cameras and found Serco staff did not have proper training to deal with asylum seekers.
The release of the report came as parliament yesterday voted to begin a joint inquiry into mandatory detention and the Villawood and Christmas Island riots. The Comcare document raised concerns specifically about the transfer of 10 asylum seekers involved in Christmas Island riots to Villawood. But the government claimed that none of the detainees involved in the Christmas Island riots was involved in the riot at Villawood. Those transferred to Villawood were under lock and key at the western Sydney facility's high security Blaxland compound when the riot broke out in a neighbouring compound.
Immigration Minister Chris Bowen's spokesman last night confirmed the Minister was aware of the issues raised by Comcare at the time. Comcare deputy CEO Steve Kibble this week said that a follow-up investigation on May 24 found it was "generally" satisfied with the Immigration Department's response to fixing the problems. But opposition immigration spokesman Scott Morrison said that the report should have been a "flashing light" for the government. It also shows the significant pressure the network was already under prior to the riots. Serco, which manages government prisons in Australia, Britain, the US, Europe and New Zealand, has also been fined several times for breaching contract conditions.
The Immigration Department yesterday refused to say how or when Serco had breached its contract, or how much the department had penalised the company by withholding contract payments. Nine Chinese nationals escaped from Villawood last year. This week's budget papers reveal that the Gillard government has also granted Serco legal and financial indemnities.
The government has opened four detention centres: the high-security Curtin facility and a lower-security family centre at Leonora in Western Australia; Scherger in Queensland's Cape York; and Inverbrackie in South Australia. A Serco spokeswoman said yesterday the government did not allow it to discuss any conditions of its contract. Serco won the five-year contract in , taking over from rival provider G4S. In a statement to the British stock exchange, Serco revealed that the contract "may be extended for a further four years" -- a detail left out of the Immigration Department's public announcement.
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March 5, The West Australian The Barnett Government is secretly planning to privatise a slab of the State's judicial system in a move critics believe marks the takeover of justice by multinational corporations. A leaked copy of a draft Bill reveals the Government wants to allow private companies to take over the management of prisoners who have been released from jail on parole or are awaiting trial. Private contractors would enforce parole conditions, such as drug testing, attending rehabilitation programs and finding accommodation and work. Part six of the Corrective Services Bill would allow companies such as Serco, which runs Acacia Prison and is bidding for the right to provide other Government services, to become major players in the State's justice system.
The laws, which are outlined in a section of the Bill entitled Contracts for Community Services, have been condemned by the Community and Public Sector Union.
Union secretary Toni Walkington said the move would compromise public safety as profit-driven companies would be put in charge of sometimes unstable criminals. Shadow minister for corrective services Fran Logan said the Government was selling off "core" public services. Are we going to have Dog the Bounty Hunter here in WA, tracking people down who have skipped their parole? Mr Ward, 46, of Warburton, died in January while being transported kilometres from Laverton to Kalgoorlie to face a drink-driving charge.
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Temperatures in the van, operated by private security company G4S, reached more than 50 degrees after it was revealed the air-conditioning in the van was broken. The compensation - which Mr Porter said was one of the largest ex-gratia payments by a government in Australian history, as well as that of common law countries - came after negotiations with the family's lawyers, the Aboriginal Legal Service, and on receipt of legal advice detailing what action could be brought against the state, and what that case might look like. It represented an "unequivocal apology" by the government. It also took into account the fact that no criminal charges would be laid.
While it did not come with an admission of liability, Ms Donegan could still take legal action if she chose. An "initial view" was that legal action would be likely, Mr Porter said. The ALS also requested further information to determine whether it would apply to have a coronial inquest into the death reopened. He described the culpability of G4S as "astronomical" and called on the company to apologise.
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We've been very disappointed. March 9, Sidney Morning Herald AS A state open to the peddling of political influence from those who have donated to government election coffers, NSW takes some beating. Starting with Sydney's foundation years ago, bending the rules of governance - and worse - to help mates who have helped you has been part of the political culture. Fortunately there is far more transparency now than in the bad old days about who makes financial donations to whom. But three recent cases in Sydney show how the culture still lives in the state Labor Party in a worrying way.
Mr Lalich declared a "non-significant, non-pecuniary conflict of interest" at the council meeting. He now says he "probably" could have been more cautious and abstained from voting. Then there is Virginia Judge, the Minister for Fair Trading, who organised a campaign against a Coles supermarket being built near Strathfield Plaza, a shopping centre in her electorate. She also successfully lobbied her colleague Tony Kelly, the Minister for Police, to have a police station shopfront set up in the plaza. Outwardly, there seems little to question. While all three MPs protest their innocence at charges of inappropriate behaviour, the cases nonetheless suggest a distinct trend for a party that seems bereft of fresh initiatives after 14 years in power.
Instead of its traditional pursuit of social justice, Labor seems to have succumbed to what the state Opposition rightly calls a "donations-for-decisions culture". Its most brazen, and extreme, manifestation was on display in the scandal that engulfed Wollongong City Council last year. Equally, the Sydney deals show the need for tougher rules against what has become in effect the recycling of political money to do favours for donors. Leo McLeay, whose son Paul also chaired a committee that reviewed private prison contracts, appears on the NSW Premier's Department lobbyist register as a consultant for Enhance Corporate.
Enhance lists Serco as a client. Serco, a multinational that runs a jail in Western Australia, has lodged an expression of interest with the NSW Government to run Parklea and Cessnock jails. But both Leo McLeay, a former speaker of the House of Representatives, and Serco say Enhance Corporate is not involved in lobbying for the jails contract. A spokeswoman for Serco, Emma Needham, said the company had engaged another lobbying firm, Government Relations Australia, for the contract. They were advising us on transport issues. That work concluded earlier this week.
He said: "It is completely unrelated to prisons. The executive director of the group is the former Queensland deputy premier, Jim Elder, who quit politics in late after being caught up in an electoral fraud scandal. An associate director is Chris Ellison, the former justice minister for the Howard government. Meanwhile, NSW prison officers will begin overtime bans at Long Bay jail this morning, with staff at Parklea, Grafton and other prisons expected to impose similar bans over the weekend. The officers are angry about comments made last week by Ron Woodham, the Corrective Services Commissioner, to an upper house inquiry into the proposed privatisation of Cessnock and Parklea jails, in which he accused them of the "manipulation" of overtime rosters.
A month later a report from the committee concluded that the Government should keep the prison operating. GEO is the second biggest operator of private prisons in the US. It is favoured to take over Parklea and Cessnock jails when they are privatised. A spokesman for GEO said there was no discussion of the committee's report at Mr McLeay's dinner and the company had understood that the report had been written long before the fund-raiser was held.
All of this is even more concerning when the donations are from a company with the international reputation of the GEO group. State Ombudsman George Brouwer yesterday tabled his annual report, vowing to shine a light on the more murky aspects of public-private partnerships and outsourcing and noting the "high risk" that comes with the blurring of the private and public sectors. In the report, Mr Brouwer highlights a "growing interdependency" between government and business, which brings "a high potential for conflict situations and confusion about the ethical standards required".
While issues of conflicts of interest, poor customer service and failure to fulfil legal requirements remain his core work, the Ombudsman says public-private contracts and public sector compliance with the new human rights charter are two new areas of focus. Deputy Ombudsman John Taylor said his office was concerned that private sector involvement in services traditionally supplied by government may lead to the erosion of citizens' rights.
While rising complaint figures are partly explained by the installation of phones for inmates, Mr Taylor described the increases as "disproportionately high". The emphasis on private contracting is a wake-up call for a state increasingly reliant on PPPs for services ranging from jails to water and now schools. Mr Taylor said the Ombudsman's office would make a point of scrutinising deals with business. November 24, The Age THE State Government has made it more difficult for independent observers to monitor what goes on in jails, lawyers claim.
This week, Brimbank Melton Community Legal Centre was told it could not set up a legal clinic at Port Phillip Prison to give advice on issues such as prisoners' treatment in jail, according to the centre's principal lawyer, Philip Cottier. In the past three months, the Government had moved to restrict prisoners' rights to make freedom of information requests and given jail governors overly wide discretion to restrict prisoners' mail, Mr de Kretser said.
The laws about mail were badly drafted and could potentially capture even innocent mail exchanges, he said. Corrections Victoria had recently made secret key operational procedures about how guards should deal with force and firearms, Mr de Kretser said. These procedures were previously open to public scrutiny. The criticisms follow the release of a report this week by the State Ombudsman, George Brouwer, into a violent incident at the Melbourne Custody Centre earlier this year.
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Mr Brouwer found that guards used excessive force against a prisoner and called for a review of the centre, which is run by a private company, the GEO Group, under the supervision of Victoria Police. Deputy Ombudsman John Taylor told The Age that the custody centre was "a closed shop" with limited public scrutiny: "It's a place that no one can go. It's a de facto jail, but it's a police jail, and it's very hard to go there unless you are a lawyer or are from the Ombudsman's office. October 31, Sidney Morning Herald THE Federal Government is winding back private management of immigration detention centres after years of controversy over the compromised health and psychological care of detainees.
The Immigration Minister, Amanda Vanstone, said yesterday the Government was relieving a private company of its responsibility for health and psychological services, which would be transferred to the direct control of her department. The move follows the recommendations of a review triggered by the Palmer report into the deficiencies of care in detention highlighted by the case of Cornelia Rau, the psychiatric patient whose illness went undiagnosed for several months.
Global Solutions Ltd, whose management of health services has drawn criticisms of care standards and conflict of interest, denied the loss of services was "in any way the result of dissatisfaction with the services provided" by Global Solutions. A company spokesman said the review of the centres had not criticised the health and psychological services it managed. But the company's management of the centres and detainee health services had represented a "fundamental conflict of interest", said Louise Newman, a psychiatrist and a member of a government expert advisory panel on detention health.
Professor Newman said the failings in health care and psychological services, highlighted by the Rau saga and other cases of inadequate care, had resulted in "incalculable" suffering for detainees. The Australian National Audit Office ANAO has identified a series of anomalies, potential conflicts and inadequate record-keeping in a review of the department's contracts with companies paid to run the centres. Labor says the audit's findings are a scandal.