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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 6 Hansard (17 June) . . Page.. 1689 ..

Bill, by leave, taken as a whole

MR KAINE (Minister for Urban Services and Minister for Industrial Relations) (5.31): Mr Speaker, I have just one minor amendment. I move:

Schedule 1, page 5, lines 20 and 21, amendment to heading to Part IV, omit the amendment.

When this Bill was put together some time ago there was some discussion within the bureaucracy about the heading of Part IV of Schedule 1, and the Bill was drafted on one basis. Since then the Government has decided that there is no need to make that amendment, so we are withdrawing it.

Amendment agreed to.

Bill, as a whole, as amended, agreed to.

Bill, as amended, agreed to.

Debate resumed from 8 May 1997, on motion by Mr Humphries:

That this Bill be agreed to in principle.

MR WOOD (5.32): Mr Speaker, this Bill, along with other measures, is the result of long consideration of the problematic area of domestic violence. The Bill arises out of a report of the ACT Community Law Reform Committee, a report that was commissioned by a former Attorney, Mr Connolly, back in about 1991. Eventually two reports came down, two very fine reports upon which we should now base our future action. A number of measures have already been brought to this Assembly as a result of these reports and other measures that have been adopted in practice elsewhere. For example, Mr Humphries has said that the design of the new Magistrates Court takes in some of the recommendations of the reports. We have referred before to the anti-stalking legislation that Rosemary Follett took through this Assembly last year. That was another outcome of the reports.

There is still much to be done. There is a very large number of recommendations in those reports. They are being worked through at a steady pace. Sometimes the steps that we would wish were there are not there, and that is the problem today. One of the key recommendations of those reports is not being implemented. This Bill is a very important outcome from all that consideration, and we welcome it. It is good to have, and I would want to promote it and to get it through here as quickly as possible. But associated with that is the position of the domestic violence coordinator. There are many who, with me, believe that that position has been severely compromised by the way it has been included in this Bill.

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