Campaign Support Grows

John Welch, Secretary of the WA Prison Officers Union

I visited a Kalgoorlie on 21 May and met with the local MP John Bowler. He was supportive of our campaign and GWN television captured his statement about totally opposed to the idea of building a private prison around the existing public prison. The proposed new prison is to hold 350 prisoners – up from the 100 inmates Eastern Goldfields Regional Prison holds.

I also visited Prison Officers at Eastern Goldfields Regional Prison in Kalgoorlie to give members an update about Respect the Risk and our EBA negotiations.

Now we’d heard that this prison has been holding up to 30 per cent more inmates than designed for in the past few months. But what we didn’t know was that the recent earthquake has caused structural damage to another eight cells which are now closed – further increasing their over crowding problem.

On the same day as our Kalgoorlie visit – the WA Government announced the state budget; including $640 million to be spent on prisons over the next four years.

But while the announcement looks good on paper, the reality is that nearly of this expenditure has been announced before in last years budget.

Part of the Governments announcement promises an extra 640 beds to Casuarina, Hakea and Albany prisons; but in essence this simply means 320 beds that will be double bunked.

WA prisons have the capacity to hold 3450 inmates but are currently holding 4850. That’s 1400 inmates too many – and the government’s answer to this is to double-bunk inmates and overcrowd facilities, instead of building enough new prisons in the public system.

Their proposals will build around 1300 extra cells over the next four years yet the Departments projections say we will need that many again by the time we open these cells and units.

The other figure I noticed on Friday – is the Premier’s announcement of a $290 million surplus for WA. Yet Prisons Officers are still not being offered the fair wage deal even though we’re managing a record number of prisoners.

Isn’t it disappointing that the Government feels that a surplus is more important than rewarding Prison Officers for keeping a system in crisis on its feet. We not asking for the earth just a fair outcome –come on Colin be fair!