Page 2942 - Week 07 - Wednesday, 30 June 2010
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“(c) use the results of the Survey of Legal Needs in Australia (2011) to quantify unmet legal need in the ACT during the 2011-2012 financial year and develop a strategy to help close the gap.”.
I will speak briefly to this. I touched on my views on this in my earlier comments. I understand it is the will of the Assembly to support Mr Corbell’s amendments as a whole. My suggestion is to simply insert a new paragraph (c). Mr Corbell’s wording is that the government work with community legal centres to use the results of the survey of legal needs in Australia to quantify unmet legal need in the ACT. I simply suggest we develop a strategy not just to work with them but actually say we are going to develop a strategy.
I do not know there is necessarily a significant funding attachment to that, picking up on the points Mrs Dunne has made. I think it is about saying that we need to do more than just acknowledge, that we want an actual plan. Once we have got the survey of legal needs, we are going to have a really clear understanding of what the gap is and I think that is the point—again I accept Mrs Dunne’s observations around legal aid and other players in this discussion, but we need a point—at which we can say to all stakeholders, “We have now quantified this. We know the nature of the problem. Now is the time to write a strategy in response. This is how we are going to tackle this now clearly identified need in our community.”
That is the purpose of this amendment and I commend it to the Assembly.
MRS DUNNE (Ginninderra) (5.07): Just before I stood up to speak, I was working on the basis that Mr Rattenbury’s amendment was going to reinsert the issue about a funding plan and I was not prepared to support that. On reflection, I am quite happy to support developing a strategy. Developing a funding plan calls on the government to commit to spending and I cannot do that. But developing a strategy is a community strategy and there may be other sources of funding not just government funding, and I am quite happy to support the words as they were circulated rather than the ones that we discussed in my office at about lunchtime. I am happy to support Mr Rattenbury’s amendment to Mr Corbell’s amendments and I am sorry for misdirecting Mr Corbell when we discussed it earlier in the day as well.
Mr Rattenbury’s amendment agreed to.
Mr Corbell’s amendments, as amended, agreed to.
Motion, as amended, agreed to.
Taxation—change of use
MR SESELJA (Molonglo—Leader of the Opposition) (5.09): I move:
That this Assembly:
(1) notes that:
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