Page 1323 - Week 05 - Tuesday, 16 April 1991
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MR STEVENSON: Mr Speaker, I also seek leave to authorise the document for publication.
Mr Collaery: Mr Speaker, it is a very large document to be incorporated in Hansard.
MR STEVENSON: It is only a few pages; there are about five pages.
Leave not granted.
CRIMINAL INJURIES COMPENSATION (AMENDMENT) BILL 1991
Debate resumed from 14 March 1991, on motion by Mr Collaery:
That this Bill be agreed to in principle.
MR CONNOLLY (8.31): Mr Speaker, the Opposition's attitude to this Bill can be briefly stated, and that is that we are supporting the Government moves. The main thrust of this Bill is to increase the maximum level of compensation payable in cases of criminal injuries compensation from $20,000 to $50,000. I think the members of the community would generally agree that that maximum level is inappropriate and that courts have been obviously striving to find ways of getting around the existing $20,000 limit by looking at the cumulative effect of a series of offences.
It is easy to forget that criminal injuries compensation is a relatively new concept. It was only in the early 1960s that an English magistrate first proposed this concept that the state ought to intervene to protect or compensate the victim of a crime, and in 1963 New Zealand became the first country to enact such legislation. New South Wales took up the lead in Australia in 1967; but it was not until, indeed, 1983 that the ACT had criminal injuries compensation legislation. So we are dealing with a concept that is relatively new to Australia.
Most Canberra residents would have noted, through the pages of the Canberra Times, that the Supreme Court in this Territory has recently broken new ground in granting a substantial sum, by way of criminal injuries compensation - indeed, to the maximum - for the young survivor of a particularly serious series of incest incidents. This is the first time that an Australian court has sought to come to grips with the trauma that family sexual violence can cause to young persons. That was a landmark decision of this court and one to be commended.
A problem with criminal injuries compensation legislation, both here and in the States, is that one sometimes hears the criticism that the main beneficiaries, numerically, of criminal injuries compensation legislation can tend to be police officers. The reason for that, I think, was best brought out by a study in South Australia of the effectiveness of that State's criminal injuries
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