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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1998 Week 10 Hansard (26 November) . . Page.. 3036 ..

MR HUMPHRIES (continuing):

The proposals in this Bill will reform the way in which victims of crime are assisted by the Territory in the aftermath of their victimisation. They are based on a considered examination of the real needs of victims of crime and build on the initiatives taken by this Assembly when it enacted the Victims of Crime Act in 1994. That Act gave formal recognition to victims' rights and needs by setting out guiding principles to be followed by law enforcement agencies in their dealings with victims. The Act also established the position of Victims of Crime Coordinator, with functions which included monitoring the observance of the guiding principles.

Last year my department released a discussion paper on reforming the criminal injuries compensation scheme. Submissions on that paper from the Victims of Crime Coordinator and community-based victims support groups emphasised the need for a more comprehensive review of the way in which government assists victims of crime.

In response to these concerns, the Victims Support Working Party was convened in October 1997. Its function was to examine the options for comprehensive reform of government assistance to victims. The working party was chaired by the Victims of Crime Coordinator and included representatives from community-based victim support groups such as the Victims of Crime Assistance League (VOCAL), the Canberra Rape Crisis Centre, the National Association for Loss and Grief and the Domestic Violence Crisis Service as well as representatives from government agencies and departments. I commend the working party for its work.

I would like to quote from the working party's May 1998 report which states:

It is the view of the Working Party that the current allocation of Government and community resources to crime victims is seriously distorted and overly focused on individualised financial packages with little or no regard to whether the emotional trauma of criminal victimisation is actually alleviated. The fundamental argument of this report is that the vast majority of crime victims in the ACT are receiving no or an inadequate response to their victimisation. This report asserts the need to see current resources better and more effectively applied to numerically more crime victims than at present.

Mr Speaker, ours is not the first ACT government to seek to address the issue of the burgeoning costs of the criminal injuries compensation scheme. The former Labor Government put forward proposals, which it later withdrew, which had the sole focus on controlling costs. Unlike the comprehensive reforms contained in this Bill, those proposals essentially amounted to tinkering at the margins. They made no attempt to address the fundamental inequity identified by the working party's report which is clearly illustrated by the fact that under the current scheme about $5m was paid last financial year to around only 350 victims while thousands of other victims received no assistance at all.

The reforms contained in this Bill will not simply contain the costs of the present scheme. They focus on the whole range of victims' needs by providing victims with a mix of rehabilitative, practical and financial assistance. These legislative amendments will be supplemented by actions to address systemic problems experienced by victims in their dealings with the criminal justice system.

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