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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 1 Hansard (18 February) . . Page.. 61 ..

MR STEFANIAK (continuing):

to protect their interests; the welfare system could well face an added burden; people with injuries and disabilities will be faced with a loss of income. I find it very ironic that the Commonwealth is unwilling to fund the very matters which it said it would fund.

I share Mr Humphries's and other members' utter dismay at the Commonwealth's stance on domestic violence funding. Mr Staniforth, the director of the ACT Legal Aid Commission, has made a number of good points on that. The Commonwealth seems to be oblivious to the fact that it is affecting some of the most vulnerable people in our society. The Commonwealth initiated the Domestic Violence Act 1986, prior to self-government, to counter deficiencies in the Family Law Act. The Commonwealth should accept its responsibilities. I think it is axiomatic that access and equity before the law are critical to the effective operation of the rule of law and the stability of our society. If there is a further reduction in the capacity and the willingness of the disadvantaged to use a legal dispute resolution system, there is a real danger that these people will seek other solutions to their problems.

The Commonwealth cuts threaten to damage the legal aid partnership that exists with the private profession whereby work is undertaken at a significantly discounted rate or without charge. I did a lot of legal aid work for the firm I was last with, and it certainly was at a discounted rate. Indeed, some was without charge. The same applies to my colleague, Mr Collaery, who regularly does work without charge or at discounted rates. A duty that any good lawyer has is to take on people who can pay only a discounted rate or, on occasions, to do work without charge. But it is only fair that firms, many of them struggling in Canberra, have access to legal aid. The rate might be about a half or a third of what they would be able to charge a full fee paying client, but at least that is something. Many firms - certainly, the firms I have been with - have done a lot of legal aid work, and I think rightly so.

Madam Deputy Speaker, I suppose in the past in this place people have heard me say - and I do not resile from it - that when someone is found guilty they should bear the consequences of their crime. I have been a great believer in the fact that sometimes our courts can be far too lenient. But that is different. I am putting that aside from the question here, and that is that our system of justice holds that a person is innocent until proven guilty and that there is a due process in relation to that. In our system, a person has a right to plead not guilty, to have their case heard before a court and, if it is an indictable matter, to be tried by their peers on a jury. That is a fundamental right, and one of the most fundamental rights of Australian society - something we have inherited from the British system of justice, which goes back 700 or 800 years. Unfortunately, the Commonwealth's actions as a result of these rather ill-founded ideas on cost cutting put that in jeopardy to an extent. I do not think the Commonwealth has really thought out its actions at all well.

I am heartened to hear that there are to be further discussions between the ACT Attorney-General and his Federal counterpart. I hope the Commonwealth will see sense in relation to this matter. It has actually already been accepted, I think, that it has made an arithmetical error in terms of what sort of funding we should be receiving, and I hope

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