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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 13 Hansard (3 December) . . Page.. 4294 ..

MR HUMPHRIES (continuing):

Mr Speaker, I want to reject the suggestion by Mr Moore that there ought to be a range of fines provided for in the legislation. Mr Moore did not exactly elaborate on that; he said "a range of fines". I think he assumed a range of charges as outlined in this proposal. The great danger in requiring the court to address itself to a range of possible charges is that it, in fact, does what Mr Moore suggested ought not to have been done in the first place, which is to make the courts revenue collectors for the Government. If the court, having convicted a person and having imposed court costs and fines on the person, does not have the benefit of the criminal injuries compensation levy but, instead, has to look at the question of what damage to the fiscus might be done by this person's actions, work out what the revenue damage might be and thereby calculate some kind of charge basically according to the Government's needs rather than the court's needs, then you do have a serious problem of the erosion of the position of the court. That, Mr Speaker, I think, is not what we should be doing. The flat fee does not create any discretion; nor should it create a discretion, because it means that a simple extra charge is imposed on an individual for passing through the court; and the court's job is done by simply imposing that penalty, although, of course, we have provided that they should be able to not do so if there is a belief that that would be inequitable in the circumstances.

Mr Moore suggested that this measure would be ripe for balancing budgets in the future. I would suggest that, given that this measure presently accounts for less than one-tenth of the cost of administering the scheme overall and meeting payments, there would have to be a very significant increase in the amount collected under this levy for it to have any hope at all of addressing the wider budget problems that the Government has. It would have to be increased very substantially even to cover a large proportion of the payments the Government is making at the moment for criminal injuries compensation.

Mr Whitecross did suggest that we might be looking at - and I think he was even saying that we should be looking at - other measures to contain CIC costs. If that was his suggestion, I agree with it. Indeed, I picked up the work of my predecessor as Attorney-General, Mr Connolly, to try to find ways of limiting the nature of payouts made under this legislation. The fact is, Mr Speaker, that there are payments being made in a large number of cases which, in my view, are inappropriate and ought to be wound back; for example, people who are receiving payments for injuries which are essentially caused by their own foolishness, their own recklessness or, indeed, their own deliberate act. I think the community should not be asked to make payments in these circumstances. I hope to be able to bring to the Assembly next year legislation to contain those payments to those who are truly deserving of them and who are genuinely innocent victims of criminal activity which has occasioned damage. That said, I do thank members for their support and hope we can proceed to apply this system and recover some, but only a small part, of the cost of administering what is an increasingly expensive system.

MR MOORE (11.30): I seek leave to speak again to the in-principle stage of this Bill.

Leave granted.

MR MOORE: I thank members. I sought leave because I felt that there was a fairly facile response from Mr Humphries on the issues that were raised in this debate. Indeed, Mr Humphries started by saying that there is a need to raise money, and that is the reason behind this legislation. Of course, there is a need to raise money.

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