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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 8 Hansard (31 August) . . Page.. 2712 ..

MR HARGREAVES (continuing):

compensation by actually moving to differentiate between a bank teller and a police officer being injured being by the same person in committing the same crime. I will be very interested in seeing the government's position on that. Let us see whether the government's position is any different.

The fundamental difference for me is that the criminal injuries compensation legislation is legislation which affects the government's hip-pocket nerve, whereas the defamation legislation actually talks about hitting the hip-pocket nerve of other people. I suspect that we are going to have a completely different approach from this government on that.

Mr Speaker, I am delighted to support the chairman of the committee in receiving this reference. I doubt whether we will be able to meet the deadline. I would like to take a little bet that we will not even receive the government's submission until a week before the deadline, which is the usual case. I would make the point that the government introduced the legislation on 9 December 1999. How curious is that? The Attorney-General wants to have a timeframe of exactly 12 months-9 December 1999 to 9 December 2000. That is neat, is it not?

The Attorney-General introduced the legislation on 9 December 1999, 9 months ago-nine is a magic figure here, is it not?-and he wants us to conduct public inquiries, go into the deliberation phase and come up with a recommendation to the Assembly by 9 December. I have to say that, had he actually referred it to the standing committee a few months ago, that timetable may have been a bit more realistic and we would not have had to rush the inquiry.

Let me put the government on notice, as the government would have noticed in the past, that the Standing Committee on Justice and Community Safety will not be rushed. If the government's submission is not received in sufficient time to enable a comparison between it and other submissions to occur appropriately, we will be back into this chamber telling a sorry story and seeking an extension.

I would encourage the government to do it reasonably quickly. After all, it did all the preparatory work for this legislation during 1999, I would hope, and it has been sitting on the legislation for nine months; so it should not take too long to stitch it all together in the form of a submission. But, Mr Speaker, only time will tell.

MR HUMPHRIES (Treasurer, Attorney-General and Minister for Justice and Community Safety) (11.08), in reply: I thank members for their support for the inquiry. I think that it is appropriate that we have that kind of inquiry and I welcome the fact that members are prepared to put in the effort to make sure that the inquiry is achieved and it examines the issues in a timely way.

I note Mr Hargreaves' comments about the timeframe and the need to ensure that the bill receives adequate ventilation. Mr Speaker, I tabled the legislation last December. Since then I have sounded members out about their views on the legislation. It became clear in the last few months that members were not comfortable with simply debating the legislation without some further committee process. Therefore, it seemed to me that the only logical solution was to refer it to a committee.

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