Monday, 6 November 2023
Subject: Junee Correctional Centre.
E&OE…
Sally Bryant: Steph Cooke is the member for Cootamundra. Good morning.
Steph Cooke: Good morning to you, Sally.
Sally Bryant: What's your response to this news?
Steph Cooke: Well my response Sally is that we need to have a good look at the process by which this – for want of a better word – announcement has been made.
At the end of the day, there's been a complete lack of transparency around the way that this decision has come about. There's been a lack of consultation with the community – to the point where it's disgraceful – and on that basis, it's simply not good enough.
And the Minister in my mind needs to make the effort to travel down to Junee; I think he perhaps described it on your program as somewhere down there, and he needs to come and explain to the community exactly why this decision has been made by him…
Sally Bryant: So is this what you are hearing from the community?
Steph Cooke: Absolutely. Sally, the people that have reached out to me, people that have worked at the jail for a very long time, these are people who live and work in and around Junee and across the electorate. They're people with families, with mortgages, and they are facing a very uncertain future. They are worried...
Sally Bryant: From speaking to the Minister, it's my understanding that with some minor changes, it's expected that the transition from the private company to the government-run under Corrective Services would be seen to be reasonably seamless; that there would be almost an expectation that the vast majority of staff would stay.
Steph Cooke: Well Sally, we just don't know this. I mean, the Minister took three days to release a five to eight paragraph statement with respect to this decision, and it does not indicate in any way, shape, or form that the existing staff at Junee will be offered the same jobs, on the same pay and in what timelines. There is absolutely no information whatsoever…
Sally Bryant: So then the consultation process will need to begin. I raised this issue on Friday's program with the Minister for Corrections, Anoulack Chanthivong, and I raised your statement where you had raised concerns about the lack of consultation with the local community. Here's some of what he had to say:
Minister Chanthivong: Well look, I would say to Steph, I tried to contact Steph twice yesterday and she didn't return my call. I'm really disappointed that she put out the statement knowing that I attempted to contact her twice. Nevertheless I say to Steph, my door is always open; she's always welcome to contact me or my office to discuss the issues around Junee. But as I also said to Sally, this is 17 months to go, we will continue to carefully consult with the local community, with the employees.
Sally Bryant: Now, what would your response be to his statement there?
Steph Cooke: Look clearly Sally, this is a minister who's been caught right on the back foot around this issue. I personally got some contact [from members of the community] late on Tuesday night with this issue brewing, and I immediately, as I have always done since I've come in to the role, I've always reached out to any relevant minister with any issues of concern.
I sent him [the Minister] an email at eight o'clock, I think it was 8:04 to be precise on Tuesday night. That email remains unresponded to as at this time. But what I would say is that at the end of the day, any contact or lack thereof with me or with my office is not the issue, Sally.
What concerns me is the lack of consultation with the community up to and including the councillors and the mayor of course. We have all, the community has been in the dark around this…
Sally Bryant: Obviously, there are probably issues that the Government had to handle. I mean, it's a commercial arrangement. They're in with the GEO group, so I'm assuming that commercial arrangements would indicate they had to be spoken to first, but you would admit that it hasn't all been smooth sailing under the GEO group. I mean in July, the Deputy New South Wales Coroner found that an Indigenous man, Reuben Button, who died of heart disease at the jail, didn't receive adequate healthcare. So there have been concerns there.
Steph Cooke: These are very difficult and challenging environments, wherever corrections facilities are operating across New South Wales Sally, and I would argue that none of them are perfect by any stretch of the imagination. But at the end of the day, this is about a process; it's about a lack of transparency and a lack of respect for our community, a community that's now facing some significant uncertainty.
And let's not forget that the GEO Group contribute… in 2023, it will be in excess of seven-and-a-half million dollars to the Junee community itself, above and beyond the wages that are paid to the staff there…
Sally Bryant: So if they're spending that money in the community to run the business, then it would stand to reason that if they're running a jail of the same size, that corrective services is probably going to have to buy similar quantities of product and so forth in that local community. Would you not agree?
Steph Cooke: The problem is Sally, once again, we just don't know and we know that GEO over a number of years…
Sally Bryant: So Steph Cooke well, we are going to run out of time here. So where to from now? I mean, have you managed to contact the Minister and have you guys worked out like a consultative process? Obviously I've heard local government say that they feel out of the loop as well. Where to from now? Does a consultation process start?
Steph Cooke: It needs to start urgently. And my email requested a briefing. There's been no briefing put forward. We need to understand from this minister urgently who's been caught on the back foot on this, what on earth is going on.
Sally Bryant: Steph can I just suggest, is it going to be more useful to request a consultation without accusing him of being on the back foot? Maybe it might sound more like just a genuine request for information.
Steph Cooke: I have a job to do Sally, to represent our communities and to make sure that their interests and their needs come first. And I've always done that and I always will. And I invite the Minister to come down, come down. He's not been to the facility, he's never been to Junee, to the best of my knowledge.
His disclosures certainly don't reveal that he's had any meetings with GEO around this or that he's been to Junee to discuss it. So I would welcome him with open arms to come down this week, come down.
Sally Bryant: Okay, well the invitation's there. Thank you so much for speaking to me this morning, Steph. Steph Cooke there, the member for Cootamundra, and the invitation is there for the Minister to come to Junee jail to have a look at what is there. It's interesting times though, isn't it? And you can imagine. I mean, it's a smallish community. The Junee jail is a big place and as we've discussed, it puts a lot of money and jobs into that community. Nearly time for some local news.
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