Dale Last calls for Mark Ryan to be sacked over Townsville Correctional Centre issues

A North Queensland MP has asked how many more ‘failings’ can be had before heads will roll after prison officers made claims about a toxic culture at Townsville Correctional Centre.

• Staff’s shocking claims about dangerous prison culture

A NORTH Queensland MP has asked how many more “failings” Corrective Services Minister Mark Ryan can have before he is sacked.

Burdekin MP Dale Last has made the bold call in the wake of serious allegations from Townsville Correctional Centre staff about a toxic work culture at the prison.

Mr Last, who is the Opposition spokesman for Corrective Services, said the Minister had overseen significant issues in the police service and was failing to act for corrections employees.

On Saturday, the Townsville Bulletin published claims that stress levels at the prison had reached boiling point with a number of staff attempting to take their own lives.

The Bulletin also outlined claims of staff shortages and poor training for new officers.

“The allegations about staff culture at the Townsville Correctional Centre show that Minister Ryan has again failed to do the job that Queensland taxpayers pay him to do,” Mr Last said.

“For several years the Minister denied that staff culture was a problem and now we know that the recommendations from a review that taxpayers paid for have not been implemented.

“What we do know is that Queensland Corrective Services will only receive an additional nine staff this financial year and that, despite overcrowding throughout the state, not one of those staff will be a custodial corrections officer. Yet again, Minister Ryan is failing to heed the calls for help from his staff.”

Mr Ryan said he took staff concerns about workplace culture seriously.

“Staff safety and security at all prisons is of the highest importance,” he said.

Mr Ryan added that he had been advised that all recommendations from a report into the culture at the prison had been implemented. Staff had claimed this was not the case in practice.

“This is also why we have invested in more QCS personnel, with more than 450 people deployed to correctional centres across Queensland after completing the Custodial Officer Entry Program,” he said.

Sources told the Bulletin that a main entry point to the prison had been broken for more than 12 months.

“To have key security equipment at a corrections centre broken for over 12 months is yet another illustration of this Minister’s failings. This has a huge impact on the safety of staff and, potentially, the community,” Mr Last said.

Mr Ryan said security had not been reduced at the prison, saying QCS has implemented manual, temporary solutions why a permanent solution is developed.

Mr Last added that Mr Ryan had failed to address issues with injured staff.

Last week an officer was taken to hospital after he was attacked by an inmate.

“Almost 12 months ago we found out that, as far back as 2018, more and more custodial corrections officers were being injured at work. Minister Ryan has failed to address the increase in staff injuries, failed to keep our correctional centres secure and has failed to adequately staff them,” Mr Last said.

“This Minister is lurching from disaster to disaster on his watch and the real victims of those failings are Queenslanders who work in corrections and want a safer community.”

Mr Ryan took aim at the LNP over its lack of commitment to prison infrastructure at the last state election, and that when the party was last in power, 180 corrections staff lost their jobs. “It’s clear from Dale Last’s comments he doesn’t understand corrections, and he doesn’t understand how prisons, or prison staffing works,” he said.

Originally published as Dale Last calls for Mark Ryan to be sacked over Townsville Correctional Centre issues