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Supplementary Order Paper No 88

No 88

House of Representatives

Supplementary Order Paper

Tuesday, 17 November 2009

Corrections (Contract Management of Prisons) Amendment Bill

Proposed amendment

Hon Rick Barker, in Committee, to move the following amendment:

Clause 5:

To amend section 199 by adding the following new subsections (after line 33 on page 5):

  • “(6) This Act authorises the Office of the Auditor General to have complete and unrestricted access to all aspects of any contracted prison as if it were a prison run by the Department of Corrections.

  • “(7) The access granted to the Office of the Auditor General in subsection (6) does not extend the Office of the Auditor General’s authority into the commercial aspects of the contracted prison that are beyond the normal domain of a prison run directly by the Department of Corrections.

Explanatory note

New subsection (6) inserts a provision to allow the Office of the Auditor General the same direct access to privately managed prisons as it currently has to prisons managed by the Department of Corrections. This is to ensure that any report the Office of the Auditor General may decide to make to Parliament is based on information it has gathered in its own right and can certify is correct as opposed to a report based on information gathered by another agency.

New subsection (7) protects the commercial rights of the private management company by restricting the Office of the Auditor General to just those aspects of a contract prison that are within the normal domain of a prison run by the Department of Corrections.