Lidia Thorpe (Victoria, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

This summer saw heatwaves across the continent, particularly in the Northern Territory, WA and the north of the continent. While many of us escaped the heat in air conditioning or by a river or an ocean, not everyone had these opportunities to stay cool.

People in prison are people. They are fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, sons, daughters and grandparents. They're actually people. When they make a mistake, they end up in prison systems with horrendous conditions, where human rights simply do not exist. While we were staying cool during the heatwaves, people in so-called protective custody were sweltering, with temperatures consistently above 40 degrees. This continent has some of the hottest prisons in the world. In prisons like Roebourne Regional Prison in Western Australia, temperatures regularly soar above 50—50!—degrees, and this prison still does not have air conditioning.

The World Health Organization, the Australian Medical Association and our own national guidelines state that safe living temperatures are between 25 and 30 degrees Celsius. Above this temperature, our physical and mental wellbeing starts to be impacted. Extreme heat affects the entire body, and at temperatures above 50 degrees the body's cooling mechanisms become useless. The brain and vital bodily functions are impacted, causing intense fatigue and brain fog before vital organs begin to shut down. Lawyers and former inmates have likened the conditions inside prison to torture, a furnace or an oven. They have described it as feeling like their brains are boiling, with advocates saying a death in custody is highly likely. Fancy that! Many people in prisons have underlying physical or mental health conditions or are on medications that make them more susceptible to heat stress.

To those who say, 'Do the crime, do the time'—all those people on their Twitter and all of that—I say: do you think that people in prisons deserve this? Seriously, I ask those hackers: do you seriously approve of a human being sweltering in these conditions? The Northern Territory Ombudsman has called for air conditioning to be installed in prisons, which the government previously said is too expensive. Yet millions are being spent on building more prisons and giving money to private security companies and police. First Peoples on this continent are the most incarcerated people on earth, and the prisons with the highest number of First Peoples are the ones with no air conditioning in the cells. Coincidence?

Last year, the UN Subcommittee on Prevention of Torture's scathing report about the conditions in this country's prisons noted that cells are often dangerously hot and found that prison guards used removing ceiling fans as a form of punishment. How do you rehabilitate when you're gasping for air because you're frying in the cell? How does that fit into any definition of rehabilitation? This country's human rights records in prisons is so bad that the UN Subcommittee on Prevention of Torture cancelled its tour after being denied access to detention facilities. I wonder why they were not supposed to see what is really happening inside our prisons. What are you hiding? For nearly two decades, experts, custodial services inspectors and the independent prison watchdog have been asking for air conditioning in cells. This is such a simple measure. At over 50-degree temperatures, air conditioning is a human right.