Page 2198 - Week 06 - Tuesday, 22 June 2010
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for impinging upon people’s human rights. But it is also incumbent upon the Attorney-General to address these issues when he brings forward legislation such as this. It is not sufficient to say that we are doing what is done in other states.
I have only one question that I hope the attorney will address in his closing remarks, and that is whether the full process, as contemplated in the bill, must be followed, or whether certain elements can be skipped over to reach a pragmatic solution. For example—and there may be others—could an examination be avoided in certain circumstances and the parties move directly to an application to the court for a voluntary community service order? Such an approach may save considerable time and expense for everyone involved and deliver a result that is beneficial to all parties, especially the ACT community. If the bill is prescriptive as to the process that must be followed, it is a matter that we will want to monitor to see whether the process can be streamlined in the future.
Notwithstanding the Attorney-General’s totally inadequate handling of the process behind a bill that makes a significant policy change and has a big impact on the ACT community, it has sufficient merit that warrants the support of the Canberra Liberals.
MR RATTENBURY (Molonglo) (5.14): The Greens welcome this bill being brought before the Assembly because it addresses a problem that we have campaigned on in the past. On that basis we will be supporting the bill today. The fact that people can be sent to jail as a way to repay a fine is problematic, in our view. If you accept the rationale that prison should be primarily aimed at rehabilitating offenders, you cannot help but see that prison is simply the wrong place for fine defaulters in many circumstances.
People who fail to pay fines will generally be experiencing financial stresses of one kind or another. Whatever the reason, be it a lack of a job, rising mortgage payments or the need to pay off other debts, people do let fines go by unpaid. To then send these people to jail is a huge disruption to family and work life. The disruption can only hamper the ability to keep up with financial demands. Put simply, it is hard to keep a job and make mortgage repayments from inside prison. Prison cannot and will not rehabilitate people to pay their fines next time if they have lost their job because they had to go to prison.
The Greens have campaigned for alternatives to prison. In 2006, my predecessor, Deb Foskey, proposed amendments to give the court the discretion for court-ordered community work. That proposal was a good example of a way of letting fine defaulters retain their links with family and work, while at the same time addressing the non-payment. The government did not support the proposal at the time, citing a number of technical reasons why it needed more consideration. We are pleased those issues have now been sorted out. Most importantly, the government has partnered with Volunteering ACT who will assist in the practicalities of administering the scheme.
The bill today does include voluntary community work as an option for fine defaulters. However, it also adds a number of other options for the court to consider. Those other options are: an earning directions order; a financial institution direction order; and a property seizure and sale order. These options are of a different category to a
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