Page 3589 - Week 12 - Wednesday, 24 November 2021
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video
Experienced Institutional Child Sexual Abuse, which provides redress payments, counselling and psychological care to eligible survivors of child sexual abuse.
There is $3.5 million over two years to continue the ACT intermediary program for vulnerable witnesses, which commenced in January 2020 as part of the ACT government’s response to key criminal justice recommendations of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. This is still at a relatively early stage, but the feedback from those involved in this program is incredibly positive. It is all about enabling witnesses to give their evidence in a way where they feel safe and comfortable and, therefore, can give the best possible evidence in the proceedings before the courts.
The positive feedback from the Human Rights Commission, ACT Policing and the intermediaries themselves on the impact it has in making witnesses feel more comfortable and, therefore, more capable in giving their evidence in an accurate way is very encouraging. Seeing it from all the different stakeholders in the discussions I have had with them gives us great confidence that this is a really worthwhile investment from a whole range of perspectives in the justice system. Sometimes one part of the community will be really positive about something, but in this case, all the stakeholders really see the value in this program. I am pleased that we were able to provide this additional funding to enable the program to continue.
There is $2 million to provide funding to community-based organisations operating in the legal assistance sector, including the Aboriginal Legal Service (NSW/ACT), Canberra Community Law, CARE Inc and the Environmental Defenders Office. This funding will ensure that these organisations can continue to deliver their really important services.
There is a range of funding options in this budget. For example, the Environmental Defenders Office has been given four years of funding certainty. For groups like Canberra Community Law, we find ourselves in a more challenging situation. They have seen a significant increase in demand through the pandemic period. We saw funding from the commonwealth for one year; that funding ran out at the end of the preceding financial year, yet the community legal centres were saying to us that they were still seeing significant demand flowing from the pandemic. Of course, with the ACT going into lockdown in this financial year, those pressures have not abated.
The ACT was left in a position where, if we had not been able to step in, the cessation of that commonwealth funding would have left those community legal centres in the lurch. This put the ACT government in a very difficult position. We cannot be in a place where every time the commonwealth decides to chuck some money in for something and then backs out a year later, the ACT government is expected to pick up the tab. It puts us in an invidious position. Canberra Community Law were very forthright in saying that if that funding was not continued, they would not be able to meet the service demands arising from the pandemic.
We have been able to find the funding for this year. I know that there is already nervousness about what will happen next financial year; we will need to continue to work with the community legal centres to ensure that we think through the
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video