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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 7 Hansard (26 June) . . Page.. 2277 ..

MS TUCKER (continuing):

Protection orders are not, and were never intended to be, a substitute for focusing on the criminality of the violence. What the community feel, and I agree with them, is that we have a very exciting opportunity to take the lead in Australia in terms of implementing an integrated, multisystems approach to preventing domestic violence.

In earlier debates I spoke about the costs of domestic violence to our community. I want to remind members again of the enormous social and economic costs of domestic violence. We live in a society which focuses far too much on cleaning up social and environmental messes and not on preventing them. Fortunately, in some areas that is starting to change. Numerous reports on violence in the past few years have highlighted the more subtle causes of violence and the need for early intervention and prevention. In the area of domestic violence, nearly every major report over the past 10 years has stressed the need for a coordinated and comprehensive approach to domestic violence, and this must focus on all the players in the system.

In many cities around the world a model called the Duluth model has been used very successfully. This is a model which focuses very much on prevention and coordination. The Community Law Reform Committee report adapted this model to the ACT by recommending a domestic violence intervention project. They recognised that this model must be modified to suit local conditions. The appendix at the back of Community Law Reform Committee Report No. 9, which maps out how a domestic violence intervention project could work in the ACT, spells out diagrammatically all the players that have to be coordinated.

Mr Speaker, the project coordinator is in a pivotal position in this diagram and I think this reflects the reality of the situation. A coordinator is very important to ensure that this coordinated approach does happen. The Community Law Reform Committee, in its report, said that central to the model is a body responsible for the development of policy - that is, the Domestic Violence Prevention Council - and a body responsible for the day-to-day coordination and implementation, the domestic violence project coordinator. In the amendments we have before us the functions of the coordinator are spelt out as monitoring and promoting compliance with policy, facilitating coordination between all government and non-government organisations, assisting the council with the development of policy, and assisting the council in any other functions. The council does have such a huge range of functions that this position is very important if the work of the council is going to be successful.

These amendments will mean that the domestic violence intervention project will be able to be implemented much more effectively. Although the amendments seek to create one position, as I have said earlier, it needs to be adequately resourced and I hope we will be able to see more than one position created. As I have said before, we are going to end up wasting resources and people's time if we do not get this right, because good policy work that is done will not be able to be properly implemented and monitored. It is not about front-loading the process, as the Minister seems to think; it is about a model of prevention and a bottom up approach that can actually work.

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