Martin Bryant on suicide watch after razor cuts

Mass murderer Martin Bryant is on suicide watch in Tasmania's Risdon prison after cutting himself with razor blades twice in two days.

MartinBryant, who is serving 35 life sentences for shooting dead 35 people at Port Arthur in 1996, used a disposable razor blade he had hidden in his body to cut his neck early on Tuesday, prison authorities said.

On Sunday morning he used a disposable razor to cut his arm.

Both wounds required stitches at Royal Hobart Hospital and he returned to jail within hours of the incidents of self-harm, said Tasmania's Director of Prisons Graeme Barber.

Asked if the injuries were life-threatening, Mr Barber said: "I don't think that they were, however, if they hadn't have been detected and treated in a fairly quick response time they might have been."

Bryant is in the jail's hospital complex, he said.

"He is on higher level of watch where a staff member is with him all the time," Mr Barber said.

Mr Barber said Bryant was on 15-minute observations following Sunday's incident.

"He (Bryant) was checked in prison at 8am and at 8.15am it was revealed that he had cut his neck with what turned out to be a disposable razor blade, about the size of a paper clip," Mr Barber said.

He said it was very difficult in prison to stop any person intent on self-harm.

"The implement that has been used is a razor blade out of a disposable razor that is available to all inmates on their canteen items," Mr Barber said.

He said prisoners could collect a number of items over time.

"It looks like this particular inmate has accumulated two razor blades, one we recovered late on Sunday afternoon from his cell, which was the implement that he used on Sunday.

"We believe the second implement was secreted in his body during Sunday and he retrieved it and used it today."

Prison Action Reform legal adviser Greg Barns said the latest incident was Bryant's fifth suicide bid in prison.

"The question that the Tasmanian government and senior management at Risdon prison must answer is what steps are they taking to ensure that Martin Bryant is not at risk of self harm?" Mr Barns said.

"We were given assurances yesterday by (state) Attorney-General and Deputy Premier Steve Kons and the Tasmania Prison Service that the critics have got it all wrong and that Risdon is functioning smoothly," Mr Barns said.

"Less than 24 hours later Martin Bryant has made another attempt on his life.

"This was his second attempt to take his life in the last 48 hours and shows things are far from normal at Risdon."

Mr Barns has labelled the prison near Hobart the worst in Australia after convicted murderer Simon Deverell stabbed himself in the chest in the medium security section of the jail on Friday.

His comments drew an angry response from Mr Kons who said Mr Barns was "grossly ignorant" of the way the new model of prisoner management now operated at the $90 million jail.

"The management of the Tasmania Prison Service has my full support," Mr Kons said.

Mr Kons challenged Mr Barns to explain the basis of his claim that Risdon was the worst run prison in Australia.

"For such an expert on prisons, Mr Barns' apparent ignorance of incidents that have unfortunately occurred in prison systems around the country recently is astonishing," Mr Kons said.