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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 1 Hansard (15 February) . . Page.. 5 ..

MR OSBORNE (continuing):

The first is about the operation of the Children's Court. The committee held an inquiry and reported on the operation of the Children's Court in 1998. One of the recommendations from that inquiry, the establishment of a designated Children's Court Magistrate, has since been implemented amongst controversy and no little difficulty. Without revisiting the arguments and benefits of that appointment, I point out that the 1998 inquiry also recommended that the Chief Magistrate produce an annual report which consolidated data on the Children's Court.

The committee believed then, and still believes now, that information on the training undertaken by magistrates and the number of training hours and types of training; feedback from children, young people and relevant community and government agencies about their perceptions of the Children's Court; waiting times for Children's Court cases, including length of time from the initial listing to resolution; the number of magistrates hearing each case; and the number of hours spent on Children's Court matters by the Children's Court Magistrate would improve understanding on how the Children's Court was operating.

As the Government unfortunately chose not to respond to the committee's recommendations on the Children's Court inquiry, the committee is still unaware of any intention to put this recommendation into practice. In order to discover the Government's thinking on this matter, the committee has restated its support for the release of this information by the Chief Magistrate and again asked the Government for a response.

The second section of the report I would like to draw members' attention to today is on the topic of drink-driving. The committee noted that the number of roadside random breath tests conducted by police had gone down from the previous year by just under a third and the number of people dealt with for being over the drink-driving limits had correspondingly decreased by just over a third. The Acting Chief Police Officer, Denis McDermott, gave a number of reasons why the number of random breath tests had been reduced.

While the committee accepts that an effective drink-driving strategy is more complex than just counting the number of motorists breath tested, we did agree that this might be a good time for the Government to evaluate its current strategy and look for better ways to target resources. The committee noted that in recent years some States have extensively analysed their drink-driving trends and consolidated relevant data into a single report from which strategies can be drawn. We believe that this kind of report would be a useful tool here in the ACT and have encouraged the Government to consider this course of action.

Mr Speaker, while on police in general, I would also like to mention two other matters - the Commonwealth review of the ACT policing agreement, and the heroin shooting gallery. The new policing agreement with the Commonwealth has been an issue of concern for the committee since the beginning of the Fourth Assembly, and perhaps longer for some members. Progress on this agreement has been particularly slow, covering over three years. While I understand the agreement has now been signed and been operational for a few days, I recently foreshadowed my intention to seek approval

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