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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 5 Hansard (15 May) . . Page.. 1556 ..

MR WOOD (continuing):

in the future. When the Minister tabled these two volumes he made a good statement, but it was still fairly cursory and did not go into any detail. I understand that in amending the legislation, and in other processes, there is an enormous amount of work to be done. We have only about three items coming up in these amendments tonight, but they cross over four Acts and they go right through the four Acts. There is a lot more work in amending the Acts than is really reflected by the small number of recommendations being accepted. The community, especially the community concerned with domestic violence, is very keen to get a detailed statement from the Government about its future intentions. That has not been done at this stage and I think it is important that we move on to that.

My second request of the Minister - I have mentioned this to him personally - is that we review the position of the domestic violence project coordinator. When Mr Humphries tabled one of the reports, he said:

... the committee's report has produced a blueprint for action incorporating the essential features of a model that originated in Duluth ...

That was a key part of these reports. Not explicitly, but by those words, the Minister seemed to suggest that he endorsed that blueprint. It appears not to be flowing through in action. In fact, following my conversation with him, it is quite clear that it is not flowing through in action. Those who produced these reports - bear in mind the enormous amount of effort that went into them - were absolutely emphatic that there needed to be a domestic violence project coordinator to put together all that work.

One of the problems confronting the people in this area was that there were so many departments, and so many groups and linkages, and they were not getting put together. They needed that domestic violence project coordinator. What has happened is that Mr Humphries has indicated that he is going to marry that coordinator into a new position, or not too new position, with VOCAL, the Victims of Crime Assistance League. He is going to get two jobs for the price of one, and I think that is going to be to the detriment of both jobs. The Victims of Crime Coordinator is a very competent, very good person, but she is now going to be required to do two jobs that are not quite similar. They have quite distinct strands to them and I do not think it is going to work well.

That Duluth model required a comprehensive, collaborative, interagency approach, as I said. It requires case flow monitoring. I do not believe it is a sufficient response from the Minister to lump that very large amount of work onto a person who already has been appointed to do a different job. Maybe there are some cross-linkages, but she is going to be doing a different job, and I do not think it is going to work. I know that the Chief Minister has met that person and has spoken with her. No doubt she is a very competent and able person, but I do not think it is fair to ask that those two jobs be compacted into the one. So, that is my second request to the Minister - that he review the situation before we discuss this Bill in the next session and see whether he can find the resources to fund the stand-alone position of coordinator for domestic violence upon which so much emphasis has been placed. I will say more about that when the debate on that arises in a month or so.

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