Page 2315 - Week 07 - Thursday, 4 August 2016

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fact that we want to make sure that these powers are used appropriately, and I again express my frustration that what should be reasonably useful reporting to this place and others in the community is not available. It makes it more difficult when we get to this place to debate the requirement for and necessity of the new laws.

MR RATTENBURY (Molonglo) (12.18): This is very unsatisfactory where we have seen a situation in Queensland, for example, where Indigenous youth receive 37 per cent of the move-on directions even though they account for only four per cent of the population. To say that something like that is specific to another jurisdiction belies the fact that in the ACT we see the same overrepresentation of Indigenous people in our criminal justice system. It is perhaps not as high as somewhere like Queensland or the Northern Territory but, nonetheless, 22 per cent of people in our jail are Indigenous despite them representing somewhere around two per cent or less of the ACT population. That is wildly out of proportion.

These are the sorts of offences that produce those kinds of outcomes; not exclusively, but they certainly add to it. At a time when we should be seeking to go in the other direction I think this is entirely unsatisfactory. I struggle with the idea that we are prepared to put the law in place but it is not feasible at this time, as the attorney put it, to monitor the impact of the law.

I agree with Mr Hanson; I think it is in the entire time I have been in Assembly that there has been a range of areas where our data around criminal justice issues is unsatisfactory. I acknowledge that a budget has now been put in place, and I welcome the fact that the attorney and the government have done that to have better data collection systems. This continues to be a problem in the corrections space as well, and I must acknowledge that given my own portfolio responsibilities. But to have these shortcomings in data where we cannot even monitor whether these sorts of laws will be implemented as intended is entirely unsatisfactory. It is one of the key reasons I cannot support this bit of the legislation going forward.

Question put:

That Mr Rattenbury’s amendment No 1 be agreed to.

The Assembly voted—

Question so resolved in the negative.

Amendment negatived.

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