On Thursday 5 March 2026, Shortland Correctional Centre (CC) delegates, the Prison Officers’ Vocational Branch (POVB) State Executive and the Public Service Association (PSA) attended the Industrial Relations Commission (IRC) around safety concerns at Shortland Correctional Centre.

Shortland CC has an issues register with a large number of issues that have not been addressed or resolved, a new issues register that already has some issues and will have more added and three outstanding resolutions to issues that have not been implemented yet. The failure to address these concerns and consult with their employees and the PSA had to be resolved.

Corrective Services was concerned enough about this IRC appearance to take the extraordinary step of engaging two individual barristers for a matter that did not warrant it. Despite this step, the following agreement was reached between the parties:

1. All matters on the existing issues register must be consulted on and addressed within seven days
2. All future matters to appear on the new issues register are to be consulted on and addressed within seven days of notification.
3. The:
   1. agreed remand beds will be switched off by Monday, 9 March 2026 at the latest
   2. AVL Suite issues will be resolved by 23 March 2026
   3. overseer concerns will be addressed by 9 March 2026 at the latest
4. The parties have leave to list matters before the commission at short notice if not resolved as agreed above.