Ms ROSOL question to MINISTER for CHILDREN and YOUTH, Mr JAENSCH
We have heard it again and again and again – one day, soonish, Ashley Youth Detention Centre will be closed. Announcement, after confirmation, after update, after announcement, and yet here we are. The centre will not be closed by the end of this year as first announced. It will not be closed as soon as possible, as recommended by the commission of inquiry (COI). It will not be closed in 2026, as set out in the government response to the COI recommendations, and given the timeline outlined in recent committee hearings, it likely will not be closed before 2029. Exactly when will you close Ashley Youth Detention Centre, or have you given up on closing it and are simply kicking the can down the road while creating the illusion of moving towards closure?
ANSWER
Honourable Speaker, I thank the member for her question and interest in this important area. As we discussed at the recent scrutiny hearings, the matter of closing Ashley is not just about closing a building and building another building. The approach we are taking to reform of our youth justice system means that the facility that will replace Ashley in our overall youth justice system will be a far smaller facility designed specifically to care for the young people who are sentenced to detention who are 16 or over, not young people who are remanded in detention who are the majority of young people in the Ashley Youth Detention Centre today.
We are not just building another Ashley and we are not building what the government and former premier announced in 2021, which was associated with the 2024 deadline that you spoke to. Not just two smaller Ashleys in different locations, but a reformed youth justice system which does not have young people who are not sentenced in detention, but creates more options for them to be diverted from offending behaviour, diverted from detention, and cared for in such a way that their chances of reoffending and returning to detention are much smaller. We are delivering on several fronts at once where we need to deliver a range of diversion options that have the effect of reducing numbers of young people in detention by the time we have a new detention facility ready for a smaller number of young people.
I have not heard anyone yet in this parliament or in our stakeholder community who does not support that as being the right way to go – reducing the number of young people in our system and reserving detention for a very small number of young people who can receive extended therapeutic care to prevent their reoffending and to ensure they can have productive lives. We will deliver all of that as soon as possible. I think it is overly simplistic, particularly from people who have been part of this conversation for quite some time now and who have visited the place and met with the people who are running it, to be fixated on a date for closing a building. This is a far bigger challenge.
Members interjecting.
Mr JAENSCH – This is a far bigger challenge. This is a far bigger set of reforms and more ambitious and more worthwhile than what your questions would suggest.
Members interjecting.
The SPEAKER – It is hard to hear the minister’s answer but it is also hard to blame people for the response to that part of the question. I ask people to allow the minister to answer. He has been asked when he intends to close it. So far, we have ‘as soon as possible’.
Mr JAENSCH – As soon as possible and not sooner than possible. What I will not be doing as minister is closing Ashley and moving young people to a facility that is less fit for purpose than Ashley is.
We are working on many fronts with many partners to ensure we have the right facilities and the right system to take care of it.
The SPEAKER – The minister’s time to answer the question has expired.
