Question Time in the ACT Legislative Assembly yesterday ran like an ongoing television progam about the Bimberi Youth Detention Centre, with brief commercial breaks of Greens public service announcements on affordable housing. Today is not expected to be any different

Minister for Children and Young People Joy Burch at 11am made a statement on the early February incident at Bimberi where a couple of teenage detainees broke out of their “cabins” and assaulted a security guard, which accompanied a morning media blitz over a letter to “The Canberra Times” by a former teacher.

Debate over culpability at the prison raged from 11am into Question Time, with WIN TV cameras recording everything.

Tabling an internal review, Burch said the guard had been left alone despite the presence of a youth worker and that the cabins had been “fortified recently”.

The Minister attributed three key failures to the incident:

• A failure by staff to follow policy processes
• A failure to train MSS security staff
• A security deficit

Liberal spokesperson for children Vicki Dunne hammered Burch in her reply, saying the “real issue” was the “litany of failure we have seen by this minister confirmed by the paper”.

Dunne said the Government had spent $42 million on building the facility at Bimberi, but had “put no thought into how it should be run”.

“It’s a nice shiny building,” Dunne said.

Wishing the injured guard a speedy recovery, Dunne asked why he had been untrained and left unsupervised in the first place, pointing out Burch had promised in 2010 to remove guards employed by the MSS Security at Bimberi.

A side issue of concern was the sacked Bimberi woodwork teacher, Dave Cavill, employed not directly by Bimberi, but by non-profit charity Caloola. As such Education Minister Andrew Barr said he would have to investigate the matter to find out the exact reasons for Cavill’s dismissal. Cavill has said he was sacked a week after he raised safety concerns with the team investigating Bimberi and Barr had previously lauded him as an exemplary teacher.

ACT Greens’ leader Meredith Hunter said their main issue of concern at this stage was the number of procedures it was assumed were already done at Bimberi, which the paper revealed were in fact not done.

These included personal alarms for guards, appropriate training and supervision by Bimberi youth workers.

Hunter also said it was unacceptable that employees at Bimberi were not given suicide training, considering a detainee had taken their own life at Quamby.

Because there are two ongoing reviews into Bimberi, Minister Burch is unable to comment on a number of issues worrying the opposition benches.

Debate on Bimberi continues today.