Page 3703 - Week 12 - Thursday, 13 October 1994
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That is a 1,161 per cent increase. I agree with the Minister that, if a claim is genuine, it should be paid. Madam Speaker, I have prepared a graph, which shows that in 1991-92 it cost $10 per ratepayer. For 1997-98, the projection is that it will go up to $150 per household. That shows that the rate has been climbing. I seek leave to table this graph.
Leave granted.
MRS GRASSBY: If this increase keeps up, we all know how it will end up. In 1991-92 it was $12 per household. I agreed with the Minister that this matter really needed to be looked into, and the committee did so. This is where I had a disagreement with the committee. I thought that, with the jump from $1m to $3m in such a short period, it was climbing very high.
When I read a lot of the cases, I did not quite agree with the rest of the committee that they were genuine. There were a lot of cases that involved intoxicating liquor. In America, these days, you find that, if a person gets drunk in a hotel or a tavern and then goes out and causes problems, the person who owns the tavern gets sued. I think we need to look at the fact that the Government should not be paying for these sorts of things. There was one case where a girl was involved in a hold-up of a bank. She was working in the bank. She was paid because she was dreadfully upset and had headaches and everything afterwards. I believe that the bank should be responsible for that. It happened in her workplace. The bank should be responsible, not the ratepayers of Sydney. I did not believe that that was correct, and that is why I put additional comments into the report.
I believed that the committee was going to suggest that the Bill be scrapped and another Bill be drawn up. As the Minister had addressed the complaints of the committee in a letter, I felt that there was no reason why this Bill could not be proceeded with and amendments made on the floor of the house. After all, we all know that, to get a Bill into the house, first of all it has to be taken to Cabinet and agreed to. There are not many more sitting days left this year. The fact is that we do have a Bill on the table here and the Bill can be amended on the floor of the house. I cannot see why this cannot be done. That was the reason for my report. I agreed with recommendations Nos 2 to 6. I could not agree with the first one unless it was changed. I honestly agreed with the Minister. I had a long talk to the Minister and I agreed that, the way it was climbing, we needed to look at the amount that was being paid. A lot of that has been addressed now in the committee's report. Mine was not a dissenting report, despite what Mr Humphries says.
I would like to thank the other two members of the committee, Ms Szuty and Mr Humphries, and also our committee secretary, who did a very good job in drawing up the report. I thank him for his help.
MS SZUTY (6.25): I support the comments made by the chairman of the Legal Affairs Committee, Mr Humphries, on the Criminal Injuries Compensation (Amendment) Bill 1993. The committee has, for some time, been considering the Bill and the issues in relation to the criminal injuries compensation scheme. We held public hearings, received submissions and sought additional information before arriving at our final decisions.
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