Page 3082 - Week 07 - Thursday, 30 June 2011
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You look at how ineffectual the minister was in dealing with this. He put out a discussion paper. And everything was on the table for discussion, except the one big-ticket issue. So the first that anyone in the community knew about it was when the discussion paper was launched and, “Oh, by the way, we are going to introduce this at such and such a time,” by the beginning of this year. It took until September for the Greens to come on board and realise that it was a pretty rum idea. And that finally killed it for Minister Corbell. It was a spectacular failure. And this was the iconic moment for Simon Corbell in his administration of justice.
The administration of justice is a very important issue. There are people languishing on remand for years because they cannot get into the courts, and the only solution that Simon Corbell could come up with was a fundamentally flawed solution. He did not consult about it, he got smacked down and he has been smarting about that smack-down ever since. But we still do not have the solutions.
We had another suggestion for dealing with the backlog in the courts, which was another smack-down from the Greens, the Liberal Party and just about everybody in the legal community, again saying how flawed it was, where this attorney was prepared to oversee a situation where anyone accused of an offence that had a penalty of less than five years would have it dealt with summarily. That was entirely and completely inappropriate. It was pleasing that sense prevailed in other places and we have managed to maintain the rights of people in the ACT.
Yes, it is important to address the backlog in the courts. I have said people are languishing for a long time, waiting for their matter to be heard. But do we trample on other sets of rights to do that? Do we take away century-old rights because this minister cannot get it done?
There are issues in relation to the treatment of the Victims of Crime Assistance League and their service contract with the government. There have been two occasions in successive years in which the future contractual arrangements were uncertain six weeks before the end of the contract. This is unfair. This is completely inappropriate. If the minister and his agency do not want the Victim of Crimes Assistance League to do the work that they are currently doing, put them out of their misery and tell them, “We don’t want you to do it. We’re not going to fund you anymore.” Give them some certainty. Allow their staff to make appropriate arrangements.
It is not dissimilar to the treatment of the solar industry. He is not prepared to give people a soft landing, and so six weeks before their contract is about to be renewed these people have no idea whether they have a job. This has happened two years in a row. It is quite clear that the minister and his agencies have concerns with the organisation, but they do not do the decent thing, they do not talk to them about their concerns and they do not talk to them about their contract. And this is an unacceptable way to behave. It is not fair to anyone. And when you consider the length of time that this organisation has been working for the community in the ACT, they deserve better treatment than they have had from Simon Corbell.
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