The parlous physical and mental health of David McBride and disturbing revelations about conditions at the Alexander Maconochie Centre prison in Canberra are a national disgrace.
Yet the only media outlet to cover this story is the free Canberra newspaper, City News.
When I asked two editors of national newspapers why they won’t investigate McBride’s current situation, they both responded – McBride pleaded guilty.
We need to be reminded, that, at his trial, McBride’s lawyers planned a public interest defence.
When Judge David Mossop ruled that there can be no public interest defence in regard to Australian Defence Forces personnel, McBride had no other option than to plead guilty.
Readers might find it strange, if not repugnant, that in 2024 the legal duty of our defence forces is to the British monarch and not to the Australian people!
This week I received disturbing revelations about prisoner mistreatment at the AMC. Parents of a son incarcerated with McBride wrote “While conditions in the prison may look fine on paper, many are currently not being adhered to.” Both are willing to talk to the media, if their revelations do not cause their son to be targeted. For that reason, I have not included their names or addresses.
They forwarded this statement from their son. “Although AMC is a prison in a jurisdiction with human rights legislation, there is no mechanism in place to ensure that the policies and practices of the prison are actually compliant with human rights. This results in conditions that directly contrast the protections that have been enshrined in human rights instruments to protect those deprived of their liberty from abuse.
“In AMC, phone calls, visits, exercise, education, health care, food purchases, even being held in accommodation that aligns with a prisoner’s security classification are considered privileges, all to be withheld on a whim.
“The result is a dangerous hostile environment where rehabilitative endeavours are all but prohibited. Couple this with the punitive emphasis that the ACT places on its parole processes, imposing onerous conditions that make community reintegration impossible, and the causes of the ACT’s criminal justice failures start to become apparent.”
The Australian Productivity Commission recently recorded the ACT as having the highest recidivism rate in the country.
McBride’s fellow inmate wrote: “This is not simply an issue for bleeding hearts: anyone opposed to state sanctioned cruelty, who believes in the rule of law, or considers community safety to be a matter of import should be calling for this prison to be overhauled, and those who oversee the practices of the AMC held to account.”
Given that the AMC houses about 400 prisoners, many of whom are Indigenous, it is gobsmacking to reveal that since McBride’s imprisonment in May this year, two fellow prisoners have died!
McBride’s daughters, his ex-wife Sarah and David’s friends in Sydney are aware that a successful appeal can’t be achieved without public help. As the federal government may spend millions of dollars opposing an appeal, supporters of David’s release are asking for donations to his fundraiser chuffed.org/project/davidmcbride.
Ever since City News published my piece “Inhumane treatment of David McBride”, I received a flurry of support to expose conditions in the AMC, and in helping remedy David McBride’s current situation.
One of the cruelest results of his incarceration is that David and Jake, his much-loved registered carer dog, are separated.
For 28 years, I served on the Queensland Parole Board and the NSW State Parole Authority. During that time we visited many prisons. Thus I know how inmates should, and perhaps more importantly can, be treated. Just as in jail, guide dogs accompany blind prisoners, there is no reason why McBride’s registered carer dog cannot be with him in a single-persons cell at the AMC.
I asked the ACT Chief Minister, the Minister for Corrective Services, and a former Minister for Corrective Services two questions.
1. In regard to these serious allegations could you please respond to this question: What, if anything, do you intend to do about conditions at the Alexander Maconochie Centre, before and after the mid October ACT elections?
2. Is it true that, since May this year when David McBride began his sentence at the AMC (which houses about 400 prisoners, including many Indigenous inmates), two of McBride’s fellow inmates have died?
Former Minister for Corrective Services, Jon Stanhope, responded promptly, I haven’t heard a peep from Chief Minister, Andrew Barr, or the Minister for Corrective Services, Emma Davidson. Given the looming ACT October 19 elections this seems surprising.
Perhaps the Chief Minister & his team might care to read these letters in City News.
1. I read, with immense interest, the article regarding the treatment of David McBride. From what I know, it’s all true. I visit a detainee at the AMC on a weekly basis (in the capacity of a professional visitor) and he has been assisting David to remain safe; he is unsafe.
The disgraceful behaviour of some of the custodial officers needs to be addressed as a matter of urgency. Two weeks ago, I was contacted by the mother of the detainee whom I visit. He had been refused his prescribed medication and placed in to ‘investigative segregation’ – it was a custodial officer (CO1) who made this decision! It beggars belief.
Janine Haskins, Canberra, ACT
2. Professor Ross Fitzgerald’s superb piece Support mounts against McBride’s treatment at AMC is extremely important, not just for residents of the ACT but for all of us throughout the nation. Fitzgerald’s interventions in McBride’s case are to applauded, but even more important are his revelations about the widespread mistreatment of prisoners at Alexander Maconochie Centre.
It is ironic that this prison was named in honour of Scottish-born Alexander Maconochie, who regarding prison reform was a century and a half ahead of his time.
After working in Van Diemen’s Land, from 1836 to 1840, Maconochie became governor of the Norfolk island prison colony where convicts were treated with extreme brutality. He immediately instituted policies that treated prisoners as human beings. Despite, or more likely, because of the fact that he achieved remarkable success in prisoner rehabilitation, he was politically undermined and sent back to England in 1844. Sadly, such vengeful undermining is still often the case with reformers and whistleblowers.
Neal Price, Hobart, Tasmania.
My call is for an urgent parliamentary inquiry about allegations concerning David McBride and the conditions prevailing at the AMC in Canberra. Conclusions should be speedily released.
Ross Fitzgerald
Ross Fitzgerald AM is Emeritus Professor of History and Politics at Griffith University. His latest books are Fifty Years Sober: An Alcoholic’s Journey and a boxed set of four Australian political satires, The Ascent of Everest, co-authored with Ian McFadyen of ‘Comedy Company’ fame.
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