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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 8 Hansard (30 August) . . Page.. 2673 ..

MR BERRY: He protests that it is more than that. This bill covers all employees in the territory. It ensures that their identities are kept as confidential as possible. The Bar Association say that the legislation is okay and will achieve the results intended. I am happy to accept their support on this. I am happy to accept that the people who drafted this bill think it will deliver the goods so far as that is possible. The legislation should be passed. If you come up with something else in your review, Mr Humphries, I will be happy to consider it.

MR HUMPHRIES (Treasurer, Attorney-General and Minister for Justice and Community Safety): Mr Deputy Speaker, I seek leave to speak again

Leave granted.

MR HUMPHRIES: I will be quite brief. I emphasise again that what I have raised is a concern which has been expressed to me by my department about the operation of this bill. The government has every intention of supporting the intention of what Mr Berry is trying to do, but we do not believe it is achieved by this bill. We are attempting to review the operation of these orders at the moment to achieve this result.

Mr Berry is saying this bill applies more widely than just to teachers. I accept that. The inference I took from the earlier speech obviously was mistaken, and I acknowledge that. But on my reading of the terms of this bill, we do not have an exemption from the requirement to name aggrieved parties. I refer in particular to proposed new subsection 198B(3), which Mr Berry quoted. It is about an affidavit which contains an aggrieved person's consent to the making of the order. Bear in mind that a person for whom an order is made needs to consent to that. You cannot get an order in favour of somebody without them agreeing to that.

The fact that that person has given their consent in an affidavit is a piece of information which does not need to be provided to other parties in the proceedings. That is what 198B(3) says, as I read it. It does not obviate the need for the court to consider who the aggrieved parties are and to name them in the court order. If you think about it, logically that is how restraining orders have to work. They restrain somebody from doing something to somebody else. As far as I am aware, you cannot have restraining orders against animals or against buildings. They have to be against people.

Mr Berry: You do not understand this. I will come back to it.

MR DEPUTY SPEAKER: I do not think we are making progress here.

MR HUMPHRIES: No, I do not think I am, Mr Deputy Speaker. But I have to emphasise that the arrangement in the present restraining order scheme is to protect people. They are the aggrieved persons. You must name the aggrieved persons in the restraining orders. Notwithstanding that an employer can make an application on behalf of an aggrieved person, the aggrieved person must still be named, both in the application and in the order. The anonymity which Mr Berry has argued for is not achieved by his bill. It is not achieved by proposed new subsection 198B(3). You can read that to see it does not achieve that. It protects the identity of the aggrieved parties in respect of one piece of information in the process leading up to a court decision, but the court itself still

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