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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 6 Hansard (17 June) . . Page.. 1694 ..

MS TUCKER (continuing):

It is particularly disappointing that the Government has not taken the initiative to approach the Commonwealth for assistance with resourcing this model as a showpiece to Australia of a preventative holistic approach to reducing the incidence of domestic violence. Instead, Mr Humphries came out straightaway and said he wanted to use the national crime prevention money for a trial of surveillance cameras. Although it would be preferable, obviously, to get the prevention council up and running as soon as possible, it is much more important, I believe, to get the model right in the first place.

The Law Reform Committee has done a lot of work. The Government should recognise this work. I hope that we can move forward over the next few weeks and come up with a better model that is more realistic and effective in terms of recognising the huge amount of work that has been done here and setting the ACT up as a leader in Australia in this very important area. I look forward to a positive response from the Government to the recommendation in the Estimates Committee report, and I look forward to working with the Government to come up with a more suitable model.

MR MOORE (5.49): Mr Speaker, in rising to speak to the Domestic Violence (Amendment) Bill (No. 2), I do not want to reiterate the matters that have been put by Mr Wood and Ms Tucker, other than to say that I also support the need for a better model than that presented in this legislation. It is important for us to understand that the Community Law Reform Committee is a committee of the Government, or a committee of the Attorney-General, not a committee of this Assembly. When its reports come down, I do not feel particularly committed to them in one way or another but look at them at arm's length. In this case I believe that the Community Law Reform Committee report, like so many of their reports, is particularly good, and we would have to have a very good reason for moving away from the model that they propose. As yet, I have not heard a good reason for that, but I have heard many good reasons why we should stick with the model proposed by that committee.

It is interesting to me that whenever we deal with domestic violence legislation a number of men in this community approach me and tell me how awful it is. I think part of the reason is to do with the power in the relationship that these men have been in. In my assessment, they have invariably been in a relationship where they had the power, and they are particularly concerned that domestic violence legislation gives power to the other person. I think it is a particularly sad situation, because these people understand relationships in terms of power, in terms of one person having the power and somebody else not having the power, instead of understanding that relationships are about shared power.

Unfortunately, we cannot legislate to say to people, "You should share power and you should share decisions if you want a successful relationship, certainly one that does not involve any form of domestic violence". I have given it a great deal of thought and I cannot think of a way, nor do I believe anybody else has come up with a way, of doing that. We are left with the decision as to where we should put the power. We know that those most vulnerable in well over 90 per cent of cases of domestic violence are women and children. The important thing for us is to reverse the situation and to ensure that power is put in their hands through our legislation.

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