Privatisation of Parklea Prison

The NSW Government will make further moves to privatise Parklea Prison, despite the findings of an Upper House inquiry.

The Legislative Council Committee report recommended delaying the privatisation by three months to allow for further negotiations between the prison officers union and the Government to achieve efficiency reforms.

The focus of the inquiry was the impact of privatisation on inmates, prison staff and local communities. The committee’s chair, Amanda Fazio, said: “Concerns were raised regarding a wide range of issues, including the morality of privatising prisons, the profit motive of corporations and corresponding impact on the welfare and rehabilitation of inmates in private prisons.”

But NSW Corrective Services Minister John Robertson insists the reform agenda could save $60 million per year, and would improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the prison.

“The formal request for tender went out to the short-listed group of companies in early May and the outsourcing of Parklea will proceed as planned,” said Mr Robertson.

Prison workers responded with industrial action and a rally outside a NSW Government community forum in Bathurst. More than 600 workers from Lithgow, Bathurst and Kirkconnell left work in protest, braving icy conditions.

A spokesman for the Public Service Association said no-one in Australia was benefiting from this decision.

“The community is at risk because for these companies to make money they have to reduce their staffing and their services,” he said. “It’s about making a political statement… it’s union busting”

In a dissenting report, Greens MLC Sylvia Hale criticised any move to privatise prisons.

“Coercive powers should only be placed in the hands of the private sector in circumstances where there is an overwhelming case to show that it will result in a genuine benefit,” said Ms Hale.

She said the coercive power of the State was qualitatively different from other government services, and its privatisation raised “serious concerns in relation to the responsibility of government to ensure the protection of the human rights and dignity of its citizens.”

In a separate development, a coroner has branded as ‘inhumane’ the treatment of an Aboriginal elder who was locked in a scorching prison van with faulty air conditioning, not enough food or water and transported for four hours in up to 50 degree heat. Ward, 46, died from heatstroke and was found to have third degree burns on his stomach from the hot metal floor where he fell.

Western Australia Coroner Alastair Hope found that Ward was effectively “cooked” to death and strongly criticised the state prisons department, the private security firm that operated the van – private company Global Solutions Limited, the same company who ran the Baxter detention centre – and the two guards who escorted Ward.

The coroner said he would ask prosecutors to consider criminal charges over Ward’s death in Western Australia in January 2008 and Ward’s family have indicated they may also sue.

GSL now runs several prisons.

– BY JOSEPH HULL