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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 1 Hansard (18 February) . . Page.. 58 ..

MR HUMPHRIES (continuing):

Some of those cases will, of course, be prosecutions under ACT criminal law, but it is also perfectly possible for some of those cases to be under Commonwealth criminal law. That is a matter, again, which the Commonwealth has accepted responsibility for picking up but appears not to have funded adequately in its most recent budget.

We were told about the contents of a discussion yesterday between Mr Williams and me. I do not propose to illuminate the Assembly on the details of that discussion. Mr Wood believes he has effective spies in Parliament House who know about the meeting. I make no comment on his assertions, but I will say that I was of the view that proceeding to discuss these issues with the Commonwealth after a period where negotiations appeared to have broken down was a good thing to do; it was appropriate; it may have delivered, and may yet deliver, a better outcome for clients of the legal aid system in the ACT. I was prepared to engage in those discussions. I retain the hope that there may be some outcome from those discussions which are proceeding at officer level after yesterday's meeting. They may produce a better outcome for us. That is a possibility. When we have a little more time up our sleeve, I am quite prepared to engage in those discussions. I make no warranty about whether they will succeed or whether they will not.

I note the Commonwealth has also placed on the agenda the reform of legal aid delivery systems in this country. I am quite prepared to talk about those things, although the details at this stage I could not give to the Assembly. I am quite prepared, however, to put those things on the table if it means that there is some chance of a better deal for ACT legal aid clients.

Madam Deputy Speaker, as at the end of last week, we were faced with a very invidious choice. One choice we had was to remain part of a synchronised or dual legal aid system in the ACT which, had it sustained a level of reduction in funding by the Commonwealth, would have delivered, undoubtedly, a poorer quality of service to all of its clients. The alternative choice was to propose to separate the ACT Legal Aid Commission from its Commonwealth role and say that, if the Commonwealth wished to deliver services to, say, family law applicants or domestic violence cases or whatever in the ACT, it would need to do so through its own mechanism, through its own separate and freestanding Commonwealth Legal Aid Office in the ACT.

Mr Wood is right to say that that course of action comes with some risks. There is, indeed, no certainty that the Commonwealth, even in that situation, would necessarily fund such cases adequately. My observation about that scenario, at least last week, was that the costs of setting up such a system would probably, on my calculation, have been greater than any saving that was due to be made. It seemed to me that there was a very serious problem facing the Commonwealth. However, Madam Deputy Speaker, we are now in the course of discussions with the Commonwealth about these issues. I think that it behoves us all to give those discussions a chance to work. I hope that it is still possible to resolve this matter. I indicate that the ACT has not abandoned the options which it placed on the table last week, but it simply says that while discussions and agreement are still possible it will continue to talk and reserve any other action until some further point where the discussions may have broken down.

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