Page 1365 - Week 05 - Thursday, 26 April 1990
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leading role that the Legal Aid Commission provides in domestic violence matters. Although formally the commission provides a full-time duty solicitor, on recent occasions and, I am advised, after the Raiders lost their first game recently it was all hands to the pump in the family law section of the Legal Aid Office. There were up to 11 complainants in the aftermath of the Raiders missing their first game.
The drama, the tension and the efforts of the legal aid staff in domestic violence could not be exaggerated by me in this chamber. There are often dramatic scenes, and recently that was the case. There is intense pressure on court staff, the magistracy and all those working in that area, including the private practitioners who attend also, although I note that in the past three months the commission has been able to make regular, urgent domestic violence referrals to only two private practitioners, with others taking domestic violence referrals occasionally.
That has worsened the plight of the Legal Aid Commission and is a matter which I am looking at now with a view to determining whether solutions lie within the commission or with a mixture of effort by this Government, particularly in funding directions, and other initiatives. Some options, for example, that may be considered are to permit people who do not have current practising certificates in law to assist applicants to make their applications before the court. Those assisting might be friends, relatives, crisis workers, refuge workers and the like. I see disadvantages in that option, and I am not sure that the commission would be entirely happy with it due to the complexity of the situation and the need to have counselling and legal assistance in the one place.
Another option is that the Law Society of the ACT could, with the large sums of interest that accrue on the trust fund, provide its own domestic violence duty lawyer service. That could be explored.
But it is vitally important that the whole of the ACT community recognise what the Leader of the Opposition said when she quoted that appalling statistic of the number of referrals per capita in this Territory. That means that a minority of men, particularly, in this community are whacking the ratepayer and the taxpayer in this Territory and are often escaping without any of the financial and pecuniary penalties that can be applied to them by other laws to pay for the court processes. I am looking at that matter very carefully at the moment to see whether there can be any cost recovery from the perpetrators of domestic violence.
Another issue which I am determined to look at is why the assaulted party and/or children should leave the home and whether realistic measures can be brought in to exclude the perpetrator from the home. But very often the situation is so emergent that the party has already fled the home before
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