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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 5 Hansard (7 May) . . Page.. 1647 ..

MR STEFANIAK (continuing):

and effectively force them into putting something back into the community. Therefore, CSOs serve not only a punishment role but an educative role as well-and a positive role for the community. I am well aware of those orders having been used in a number of instances by the Children's Court magistrate.

CSOs are also handy for offences where the courts may not consider it appropriate to jail a person. I have seen them used for persons who have a number of drink-driving offences, when they are close to going to jail. Fifteen years ago, they may well have gone to jail. The old rule then was-although it was never really applied by our courts in the ACT-that, on your third PCA offence, you were looking at a jail term. In many instances, a community service order might be a far better option because the person is still being punished.

CSOs can be combined with other options. They can be combined with suspended jail sentences and other types of penalties as well. They are a very useful way of bringing home to the offender the error of their ways, whilst they are putting in useful work for the community.

Mr Speaker, I appreciate that CSOs are not the easiest things in the world to administer-I am well aware of that. From anecdotal evidence, I suspect that the way they are administered could be improved. There are a number of things that could occur within the public service or the bureaucratic system, which administers these through the courts and the departments, to ensure that less breaches occur.

I hope the government accepts this motion. There are a number of steps that could be taken by the government, should they look into this a bit more, to ensure that the officers concerned in running the scheme keep a tighter reign on it and take whatever steps are necessary to tighten it up, to ensure that breaches do not occur to the extent that they do.

I remember my own time in the courts-certainly as a prosecutor-and what one hears when on the other side, in respect of occasional slackness in how these things are administered. There are always ways in which we can improve that situation. I think the AG will find there is room for improvement there, which will assist in turning around this disturbing figure.

I refer to one of the big problems, which is probably more for the courts themselves and the judiciary-the magistrates and judges-in playing their role. Members of the community are rightly concerned when they read a story or hear of a person who has been given a bond of some description, or something like a community service order, and the person has breached it and has not received any additional penalty and no action is taken.

I am aware of matters where people have been given a series of other fairly minor sorts of penalties when they have breached a previous one. I have seen instances where a person has been given a bond; they have breached the bond, received another bond and breached that-and nothing much has happened in relation to that. So I think it is very important for the courts to take strong action on breaches of bonds-and probably even more so for breaches of community service orders.

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