Mr DEAN (Windermere ) - I will attempt to get through this and see how I go. Interestingly, Mr President, the surgeon said to me, 'To be assured of dental treatment today you need to go to jail because in jail you have dentists and you don't have to wait, there is no waiting list and that is the best way to go for dental treatment'.

Ms Thorp - Well, it can be arranged.

Members laughing.

Mr DEAN - It is a very sad situation that that is the case.

Mr Parkinson - What did he do to you after that?

Mr DEAN - He removed my tooth and removed the acute abscess that was forming under it.

Ms Thorp - The Howard Government brought in a dental scheme in 1996 and it has caused quite a few problems.

Mr Aird - Do you know the constitutional responsibility for dental health is the Commonwealth and when they got into government the first thing they knocked off was support for dental care? That is fact. The States have been picking it up ever since.

Mr DEAN - I think I should get on to Ashley, Mr President.

Mr PRESIDENT - Yes, I was just going to make the same suggestion.

Mr DEAN - Mr President, I commend the member for Rowallan for bringing this matter forward. When he first raised and discussed it I was very much behind it because there is such a long history to Ashley. If you look at the number of absconders from Ashley over a period of a few years it is a huge number and it does not do these youths any good to know that they can get out. It does not help with their rehabilitation at all and that is the sad situation. Instead what it does, in my opinion - and I will talk a little further about it in a moment - is really make criminals of youths who had a chance by allowing them to leave Ashley so easily. That is what is happening.

Mr Parkinson - The fence is only a recent construction. For a long, long time there was no fence.

Mr DEAN - Yes, but the fence is not the be-all and end-all of it. You have to have security. There has to be adequate personnel and other security plus video surveillance perhaps. There have to be other things to support a fence.

Mr Parkinson - So it has to be made more like a jail?

Mr DEAN - No, not at all. I would have thought that some strategically placed video cameras would hardly be seen by anybody and would provide a whole deal more security of those premises and probably more staff.

Mr Parkinson - They could be filmed smiling as they left waving.

Mr DEAN - This motion in fact deserves to receive unanimous endorsement and the proposed select committee should, in my view, begin its work as soon as is possible. I believe it is long overdue. There is a degree of anguish in the history of the Ashley Youth Detention Centre, and I have mentioned that. Unfortunately Ashley neither seems to adequately perform the function for which it exists nor provide the people who work there with a satisfactory work environment - and they will tell you that, but they have to be very careful when they tell you that because if they do speak out of turn then that does not help them either. These employees are in a fairly difficult position.

The place has a regrettable reputation. There have been numerous reviews of its operation but the fact remains that Ashley is regarded as a source of constant apprehension by the residents of the district who, like the police and I dare say the staff, are fed up with the ructions when inmates abscond. There has been review on review on review of Ashley. I do not know the number, but I would like to know, if you go into the history of Ashley, how many reviews there have been and what has happened, what recommendations have been put into place. When you look at it, not a lot has changed. I know it is not a prison, I accept that, but it should not be made easy for them to leave either. What effect do those absconding have upon the rest of the inmates, from children as young as 12 ranging in age up to young adults in their nineteenth year? What it does is offer a challenge to the other youths to leave Ashley. What psychological effect does it have when the alarms are triggered and the authorities institute investigations into the latest breach of security? It confirms to them that it is a 'them-and-us' society.

Mr Parkinson - Maybe the establishment should be removed to Trial Harbour.

Mr DEAN - No, that is not what I am suggesting at all. Mr President, with the greatest respect to the Leader, the Leader is being quite silly about this. This is a home that is there for the purpose of rehabilitating young offenders. That is what it is about, so to suggest they should go to Trial Harbour and these other places, to be quite frank is quite ridiculous and not what it is about.

It confirms to them, as I said, that it is a 'them-and-us' society, that they are a part of the 'them', a subculture, if you like, that has its own rules and prizes and steps up the ladder. Talk to them and they will tell you that. Talk to the youth in Ashley. This ladder does lead somewhere; it has led many former inmates of Ashley into serious criminal behaviour and ultimately into Risdon. That is the ladder up for them, and it is sad.

Mr Parkinson - But the sad reality is you're not going to stop that.

Mr DEAN - It is an indictment, in my opinion, on us, on society and very clearly on the Government.

Mr Parkinson - It's not an indictment on the Government. You can't blame the Government for all society's ills.

Mr DEAN - Those who abscond from Ashley expect to be quickly caught. There are no Cool Hand Lukes. They do expect to get caught fairly quickly, if you talk to them. If you talk to them when you catch them, they expect to be out on the run for a few days, get caught, go back in. The challenge is to escape again and the same thing happens again. They do not expect to be out for long periods. Instead the act of escaping is a rite of passage for these young people, who often have low self-regard and usually little inner hope of making a life for themselves in mainstream society but, like all young human beings, they love to have a challenge and a sense of accomplishment that comes from rising to a challenge.

Mr Finch - And self-esteem.

Mr DEAN - Yes.

Mr Parkinson - Have you read the Corrective Services committee's report, which was a report of this Chamber?

Mr DEAN - I have, but I do not necessarily accept all of it and I do not accept a lot of the comment in it.

Mr Parkinson - It looked at youth detention.

Mr DEAN - As perverted as the idea sounds, Mr President, escaping is a kind of game and the merit of going on the run becomes a badge of honour when at last the inevitable happens and the absconders are caught and returned to custody. It is a game to them. If you do not accept that, once again I would suggest that you talk to these youths. They will tell you, they are fairly up-front; there is not a lot that they do hide. I know something of these young people. My observations of the young Tasmanians who have fallen through the cracks and finished up in Ashley is that no matter how good the intentions of government have been - and I mean successive governments, I do not necessarily just mean the current Government - my observation is that as troublesome as they are, society has failed them.

Ms Thorp - It's failed them a long time before they got to Ashley.

Mr DEAN - Well, yes, I am not saying we have not failed them before they get into Ashley, but I am saying that we are also failing them at Ashley as well.

Ms Thorp - Because they escape?

Mr DEAN - In my former career as a police officer - and this was not so many years ago - I served at Ashley, in fact I was a commander of police placed in charge of Ashley when the police took it over, Mr President, and that was about -

Mr Parkinson - So you would know that the police haven't all that great a record in dealing with youth.

Mr DEAN - In about 2001, Tasmania Police were placed in charge of Ashley, and I was a commander of police who had that responsibility -

Ms Thorp - Did any escape then?

Mr DEAN - following multiple absconders from the complex, and some anarchy within the complex.

Mr Parkinson - So it has got better, then?

Mr DEAN - It did after the police went in.

Mr Parkinson - I can imagine the methods they used.

Mr DEAN - We were confronted by young people with low aspirations and poor self-esteem, and many of them, if not most of them, came from underprivileged backgrounds and broken homes.

Ms Thorp - Well, you've just said it all, haven't you.

Mr DEAN - As you would expect, their personal histories of conflict against authority often began as delinquents in school.

Ms Thorp - So how do you build trust and respect in relationships in a situation where you're constantly incarcerating people? The reason these kids are able to abscond is that there are elements of trust involved there, and they blow it and they have to try again.

Mr DEAN - It was interesting that when the police were there, the police had a very good relationship with the youth held in Ashley -

Ms Thorp - I'm sure the people who work there now have good relationships too.

Mr DEAN - and the police got on very well with them, and the police were able to relate to them. I believe that from the police involvement in Ashley at that time some things did change.

Ms Thorp - Are you advocating that the police take it back over?

Mr DEAN - No, I am not saying that at all. I have never said that; it is not a place for police.

Mr Parkinson - Don't forget that of the total -

Mr DEAN - It is not a place for police, but it was a place for police at that time because it was out of control, and that is when the decision was made by the Government to bring in the police.

Mr Parkinson - But of the total youth in there, there aren't very many who are problem kids.

Mr DEAN - No, and I am going to talk about that in a moment because I believe that the mix of 17 and 18 year olds, and even those coming into their nineteenth year, is not right for the place. It ought not be mixed; it is a recipe for danger.

Mr Parkinson - Well, it can be, depending on the individual.

Mr DEAN - There is a lot of evidence to show that it is.

Mr Parkinson - But not in every case.

Mr DEAN - Not in every case -

Mr Parkinson - Case by case.

Mr DEAN - there are those in their nineteenth year, some in their eighteenth and seventeenth years who will make it, who will be good people in the community. So not everybody, you are right. That is my next comment, that not every inmate wants to escape from Ashley. I am going to relate a true story . This is the background of a 14-year-old boy who, in actual fact, escaped into Ashley, Mr President. This boy was on the street and he deliberately smashed a window in the presence of police officers, and he was of course detained. I spoke to that young boy the next morning when he was in the police cells where he was held. This is his story.
He had been an inmate at Ashley and he had come out of the detention centre when his time was up. He learned quickly that the State expected him to make it on his own when he came out of Ashley. There was no support for him, no follow-up from welfare or child protection officers. He was expected to return to his parents' home and that is what he did. It was a familiar place. There was a drunken party in progress - this was the story he was relating to me - and there was no food in the house. He asked his parents for money to buy something to eat, but they refused him and told him to go back out onto the streets to get whatever he could.
When he came back, they had hocked the television. The television, which he had wanted to watch, was not there. He had to sleep in the same bed as a drunken person. That is when he made a life-changing decision. He remembered that at Ashley he was fed, he had a bed and his own room and there was television to watch. There were people a few years older than him who were willing to teach him the skills and art of criminal behaviour, to induct him, if you like, into the kind of life that this poor boy believed was the only destiny for him on this earth.

At the time, Mr President, I was emotional and it really brought tears to my eyes, and I made the comment to my wife later that night, 'You would like to have grabbed him and taken him home because you could have turned him around'. It was a sad, sad story. Where he is now, I do not know, but I can certainly follow up and I will do that just to see where he is because this was about four years ago. That is what led him to walk the streets until he spotted a policeman and so he calmly, in front of the police officer, broke the window.
Is there a nexus between the records of the State Government's child protection system and those from the Ashley Youth Detention Centre? It is an area worth investigating because the longer-term solution for Ashley might well be a positive effort to beef up the child protection system which the former commissioner, Mr David Fanning, has declared as essential.

Ms Ritchie - You are talking about a link with child abuse, not just the Government's child protection service. You are talking about links with child abuse in general, aren't you?

Mr DEAN - I am talking generally.

Ms Ritchie - Then I think anyone would accept that, while you can always improve it and should strive to, no government or country in the world could manage to fully stop all forms of child abuse.

Mr DEAN - Good comment.

Ms Ritchie - I accept what you say about the links between child abuse and the future behaviour of children, but I do not think it is something that any government could ever stop, with abuse happening behind closed doors in homes, though it does not mean you should not continue to try.

Mr DEAN - You are right, I do not disagree with that comment. The purpose for which Ashley exists, Mr President, is to save young people who have slipped into delinquent and criminal ways and to help them to mend their lives so that they can come out and become constructive members of society.
In fact there are many very successful stories where this has happened, where they have come out of Ashley, because they have now been given more support - as I understand it, some financial support - and they are going into places like the North West Youth Shelter at Launceston, for instance, where they are being provided with seasonal work, transported to work and from work and really being taught some very good things about life, how to exist and what to do. That is one of the critical issues with youth at Ashley, that they have to be supported when they come out. There is no way known that they can be let out of Ashley and then left to make it on their own because, invariably, it does not happen that way.
The accomplishment of Ashley is of a vastly different degree. It is a constant source of apprehension and occasional chaos for residents in the district, and during escapes it places extra demands on our police service with consequent time and dollar costs that could be avoided.
It is interesting, is it not, that the minister on the weekend, and I will refer to it in a moment, made the comment, 'Why waste Parliament's time with this motion?' For goodness' sake, does she not worry about the wasted time of the police? Does she not worry about the concern and the dangers that a lot of these youths place innocent citizens and innocent families in when they are on the run?

Ms Thorp - But you are assuming a select committee is going to fix it.

Mr DEAN - Does she not worry about that? I would have thought that the minister ought to want the problem fixed and that there would have been some support from the Government for the select committee inquiry. I think this select committee inquiry, Mr President, will be able to investigate this in some depth and bring out a lot of the information and issues that have remained in the background, probably because people have not wanted to bring them out. A select committee inquiry, if it is supported, and I would hope that it is, will have the opportunity to do exactly that.

Mr Parkinson - We have a huge duplication of efforts.

Mr DEAN - I was going to go on to say that, above all, Ashley is an absolute failure in its core business. It does transform its inmates. It educates and trains them. As the young teenage boy said, 'The older ones teach the young. They teach them all the tricks of the criminal trade'.

We have to go back to the drawing board on this one, Mr President. The Government does not have the answer and, accordingly, I will be supporting the motion. As I said, there has been review after review after review. Not a lot has changed and we still have tremendous and immense problems there. The unfortunate thing about it is that with these games that they want to play, and it has been said in the press recently by the police, it is only a matter of time before somebody is killed as a result of somebody absconding from Ashley and playing this very dangerous game. It is only a matter of time and I think commonsense would tell us all that. We saw where the escapees four or five weeks ago stole a car, and crashed into a police vehicle. They have no fear even when they are on the run. It is such a sad and tragic situation.

Of course the Government will not support this motion for the select committee because to do so, I would suggest, would be to demonstrate that perhaps what they have done has been inadequate. In the time I have been here, I do not know of one select committee inquiry that they have supported.

Mr Parkinson - Another review will not fix these problems.

Mr DEAN - You are right, another review will not. I am glad you said that, Mr Leader, because a review will not. But I believe a select committee inquiry with the power and authority that it has, has every chance of making some very important changes in this system.

Mr Parkinson - That's just another review.

Ms Thorp - We need action.

Mr DEAN - This is not the type of review that has been previously done. This is a review that has a lot more legs and a lot more strength and I believe will get to the bottom of a lot of the issues and the concerns that currently are there.

Mr Parkinson - I'm glad Hansard is recording these comments because we will come back to them one day.

Ms Thorp - You will be able to point to the huge change.

Mr DEAN - I would hope so because I have every -

Mr Parkinson - I hope I am here when we do.

Mr DEAN - I believe that if the select committee of inquiry is supported, there will be some recommendations that I hope would be taken on board. I am looking down the line, I know.

Ms Thorp - It's already been done.

Mr DEAN - Mr President, in my opinion 17 and 18 year olds or those going into their nineteenth year ought not be at Ashley and I believe it is a dangerous mix to have youth of that age in the minority. As the Leader has indicated, not all 17 and 18 year olds are going to go down the track of becoming criminals and living that life. There are some who will turn around and become good citizens. But it is a bad mix, in my opinion.
On the talkback show this morning I heard Tim Cox make the comment, 'But why would you send 17 and 18 year olds to Risdon because that is the criminal college?'. In other words, you would send them down there and they would get topped off nicely to become real, fair dinkum criminals. That is where they are really trained.

I would have thought that in the new facility there, there would have been, and I was told in fact that there was, a facility or a part of that new complex to house younger persons to keep them away from the hardened criminals.

Ms Thorp - So this is where the Ashley people should be, you reckon?

Mr DEAN - No. I am quite amazed at times, Mr President, at some of the comments that are made across the Floor here. What I am saying is, and I thought I made it perfectly clear, that there are some 17 and 18 year olds who should not be at Ashley, they ought to be at Risdon in a place where they are kept separate from the older prisoners. I believe that the act needs to be looked at and that is one of the terms of reference, I think, of the member for Rowallan's motion. I brought along a number of press clippings and so on but I do not see much point in referring to them. It is very clear from a lot of these that the public are getting absolutely fed up with what is happening and the talk-back program this morning had a number of calls about what is happening.
Mr Parkinson - You are aware that the current legislation already allows those who are unsuitable to be switched to Risdon?

Mr DEAN - In certain circumstances, yes, but I believe there are other areas in the act that probably need to be looked at.

The comments are interesting, but they go on and on, and you would have thought that by now we would have had a reasonably good, secure system at Ashley. The point I made originally, and I make it again, was that if youth in Ashley know that they can escape it does not do their rehabilitation any good. If you have a secure unit where youth going into Ashley know that they will need to be there for a certain period of time and there is no chance of escape, that, to me, sets them up to be rehabilitated in the right way. Rehabilitation is not helped by youth absconding, running off, committing more crime and coming back in again. So one of the fundamental requirements, in my opinion, is to have them in an area where they are not likely to abscond. Now of course they can abscond any time they want to and that has become very obvious.

Mr Parkinson - Would you like to move that the debate stand adjourned so that we can have a dinner break?

Mr DEAN - Mr President, I move -

That the debate be adjourned.
Debate adjourned.

Resumed 7.58 p.m.

Mr DEAN (Windermere ) - I had almost finished, Mr President, but during the dinner break I had time to think of plenty of other things.

Mr Aird - Has the anaesthetic worn off yet or was that just a rumour?

Mr DEAN - I want to say a couple of things in conclusion. In a select committee, witnesses at least have some protection and witnesses with some protection are more likely to tell the true facts. Without that protection, we know very well that some staff, some witnesses are reluctant to give the true position of a situation. That is another reason, in my opinion, that we need a select committee inquiry into Ashley. We have good examples of how whistleblowers are protected in this State. The unfortunate thing about it is that all these examples are in fact bad examples and I do not think that anybody would want me to go through that again. There is absolutely no protection in this State. Even though we have the legislation to give protection to whistleblowers, it has not been put in practice at this stage. In this situation, as I said, with an inquiry such as the one we are now putting forward, there is some protection offered to these people under this system.

The Police Association is the other thing I wanted to mention. In today's paper the President of the Police Association spoke of his disgust or his frustration with the situation at Ashley and he has made it very clear that the police are getting sick and tired of running around all over the State apprehending absconders from Ashley. It is normally his members that are in the firing line; they are the ones who, in many instances, are placed at danger and therefore they are not happy at all.

Mr Parkinson - They always make the same comments about Hayes.

Mr DEAN - Hayes is nowhere near as bad as Ashley. The Leader puts that position up; I would like to look at the number of escapes from Hayes -

Mr Parkinson - There are no fences at Hayes. The point you are making is about the police being upset. The police are always upset when they have to chase an escapee.

Mr DEAN - And compare them with the number of absconders from Ashley - nowhere near the same numbers. The other thing that concerns the president of the Police Association, and ought to be of concern to the Government as well, is that the police are not able to keep up their quotas because of the time that they are out running around after these absconders from Ashley.

Mr Parkinson - They can establish another quota.

Mr DEAN - Mr President, I would prefer that the Leader does not make me laugh but there are no escapes on the quota list. I have been through the list and I did not see escapes anywhere. I mentioned the fact that rehabilitation, in my view, is supported and assisted where security is identified. Where absconders know very well that they are not likely to be able to escape, they are more likely to settle down and do the things that they can do.

As an example of this, when the police did have control of Ashley, Mr President, there was no proven offence there. When the police were there, with the added numbers of police for security, there were no escapes from Ashley at all. It was a period of about three months, from memory, and there was not one escape. The staff indicated during that period that the absconders were better behaved and more willing to undertake the duties and the things that they were required to do.

I remember one of the education officers saying to me that there appeared to be a better attitude towards the education program that was occurring in Ashley . So, Mr President, there are many reasons there ought to be better security. We have heard the minister say that they have suddenly found the money and resources - whatever else is needed - to put on some extra staff at Ashley. Why did that not occur three weeks ago? Why did it not occur three months ago? Why did it not occur two, three years ago when things were happening?
No, we cannot sit back and allow this to go on. The Legislative Council, in my opinion, is obligated to do something about it. I really do not know how I would react in a situation where an absconder maims or kills an innocent person. I would have great difficulty, Mr President, in standing up and saying, 'I did all I could do as a member of parliament to prevent such a tragedy'.

The previous review did not resolve these very significant issues. The recommendations of an inquiry or investigation may mean stricter rules in the end. However, I believe that, at the end of the whole thing, it will be for the benefit of those people who unfortunately need to be detained at Ashley. So I will certainly support the member's motion, Mr President, and I feel honoured to have been identified as a member of that select committee.

Motion agreed to.