Page 4040 - Week 13 - Wednesday, 26 November 2014
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Earlier this month I made the decision to allocate $80,000 from the confiscated assets trust fund for women’s sector proposals that align with the ACT prevention of violence against women and children strategy. I will be announcing the details of those funding programs shortly. This payment will bring the total of the amount approved for women’s sector payments to address violence against women and children to just over $500,000 since 2009. The government has a strong commitment to working with those groups in our community that work to respond to and address the issue of violence against women and children in the ACT.
I have circulated an amendment to Mrs Jones’s motion that seeks to address the last point about data gathering. I want to start by saying that I agree absolutely that better data gathering is important for this issue to remain in the public spotlight and I commend her for bringing the issue to the Assembly’s attention this morning. The amendment that I have proposed is, I would suggest, a refinement to the motion put forward by Mrs Jones. It is not put forward as a proposal of opposition, because we agree absolutely with the sentiments and the statements that are otherwise set out in Mrs Jones’s motion. This should be a matter that is beyond partisan political debate.
The amendment that I have had circulated, Madam Deputy Speaker, and which I will shortly move, seeks to address how the government is proposing to respond to this issue of data gathering. Let me give some context on this. In 2013 the Justice and Community Safety Directorate completed a review of the content and presentation of the quarterly criminal statistical profile. That is a very comprehensive report on data across the criminal justice system that I table every quarter in this place. I tabled the most recent version of that yesterday.
One of the limitations of the profile that was identified in that review was the absence of certain data sets. The 2013 review recommended the development of topic-specific data sets on family violence crime. Officers from Justice and Community Safety are currently engaging with the Family Violence Intervention Program Coordinating Committee and the Domestic Violence Prevention Council on how this data should be incorporated into the criminal justice statistical profile. The intention is to include a family violence data set in the profile for the first time in March next year. That will be published in mid-2015. That is for the March 2015 quarter, which will be published early in mid-2015.
The publication of that family violence data will rely on the important work of the family violence intervention program. Established in May 1998, the FVIP is a coordinated justice and community response to criminal family violence matters. It is chaired by the Victims of Crime Commissioner, Mr Hinchey, and is made up of representatives from a broad range of justice partner agencies, including JACS and the courts and tribunals, police, Corrective Services, Community Services Directorate, DPP, Domestic Violence Crisis Service, ACT Law Society, Legal Aid and Victims Support ACT.
The FVIP coordinating committee commissioned the Australian Institute of Criminology to conduct a review of the program in 2009. The scope of the report was
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