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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 12 Hansard (11 November) . . Page.. 3897 ..

MS TUCKER (11.45): In the Children's Services (Amendment) Bill and the Crimes (Amendment) Bill (No. 5) there are basically three issues before us, as Ms Reilly has pointed out. The first is the relatively minor issue, that the Government wants to bring the annual reporting requirements of the Official Visitor into line with those of other agencies in the ACT. The Greens are happy to support this. We have been assured that the annual report will be incorporated in the full departmental report.

The second issue, which is the subject of the Crimes (Amendment) Bill (No. 5), is to allow the courts, when imposing a sentence on an adult, to take into account the unserved component of any juvenile sentence that is still applying to that person. The Greens are also happy to support this. It is obviously inappropriate for an adult to return to a juvenile institution, particularly after they have served a sentence in an adult institution.

The third issue in this, which the Greens will not support, is that the Government wants to give the Director of Family Services the power to approve the transfer of a young person from one institution to another, including to an interstate institution. There are a number of reasons why I am opposing this. Firstly, there is already a process whereby transfer can be approved; that is, through the court. The Government argues that the court does not have the power to consider management issues which may necessitate a transfer, because the court can consider only the individual welfare of the young offender in question.

I have difficulty in accepting this argument and the quality of the advice that I have been given on this matter. First of all, I was informed that, absolutely, it was not a matter for the court to look at these issues. So, then I asked: How many times have people actually been transferred to an interstate institution through the courts? That information came later. There has been one such instance, which was in the last couple of days. Mr Moore, I will ask you to listen to this, because I think it is very important and it concerns the quality of the advice I am getting. There has basically been one transfer in the last five years, and that was in the last couple of days. My understanding of the situation is that it was actually about offences committed in New South Wales. New South Wales sought to extradite this person to have the case heard in New South Wales. So, it is not the same kind of instance as we are talking about here, anyway.

I also sought clarification on why it is not the court's role to also look at how the particular individual is impacting on other residents of the facility. This is the management issue that we are being asked to consider. Once again, the advice was really unclear: A magistrate - we are not sure who - said to someone else that they probably thought that it was not the appropriate thing for a court to do. That is not high-quality advice. That has not been tested. I asked: Is there a legal opinion to show that the court cannot take into account how this individual will impact on other residents of a facility? That is the management issue that we keep being told is the main reason for this legislation. There has not been any real test of it, and I think you can argue that the two are not contradictory. If you are looking at the individual welfare of a person and that person happens to be causing absolute havoc for other people in the facility, it is not contradictory to look at that as well. So, I just do not think any of the rationale behind the advice is solid or has been supported by any real evidence.

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