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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 9 Hansard (6 September) . . Page.. 2944 ..
MS TUCKER (continuing):
In 1993, the applicant, a woman who had previously suffered depression since 1975 and had been treated for a depressive illness since 1987, smelt smoke in her ground floor flat where she lived by herself. When she investigated the source of the smoke she noticed her front doormat which had been doused with petrol, and the front door were on fire.
Her flat was filled with smoke and fumes. She succeeded in putting the fire out and reported the matter to the police.
Following this incident she became acutely anxious and had trouble sleeping. She had a fear of asphyxiation. She felt insecure in her flat and considered seeking a transfer to a safer area.
Another tenant in the same flats had recently been seriously burnt as a result of a fire in his flat. The applicant's underlying depressive condition flared up as a result of her anxiety about the fire. She was diagnosed as suffering a post traumatic stress reaction following the fire and required counselling and therapy to help her deal with her problems. Her condition was expected to take up to two years to improve.
In these circumstances, the award of $3,500 could be considered to be modest.
Clearly the Government did not at the time consider the award to be incorrect or excessive as its right of appeal was not exercised. If this is the best example of one of the worst cases then decisions of the kind referred to in the article can hardly be criticised as being without merit.
Alan Towill, Registrar, Supreme Court of the ACT.
The point that is made in that letter is that individual circumstances have to be looked at and that there may well be good reason to understand that the trauma is much greater than one might think on the surface. That is why we need to allow for a system which gives discretion to the judiciary to deal with these matters.
One of the other groups that have been offering us support is the Foster Carer Association. They are very concerned because they have children coming into their care who may be victims of sexual, physical or emotional abuse. Most of them are, in fact. The foster carers are concerned that, because of the inequity created by Mr Rugendyke's amendment, those children will have different entitlements. That is obviously not something that you would want to see continuing. I am surprised that Mr Rugendyke has not taken that on board in this debate today and changed his position even just on those grounds. Obviously he is very well aware of the issues for foster parents.
Another irony relates to the fact that the ACT was leading Australia in the field of discrimination law. The ACT is the only jurisdiction that has dealt with discrimination on grounds of profession, trade or calling-this was put in by Michael Moore to protect sex workers. What I find so interesting is that although we have that discrimination legislation, we have created discrimination on those very grounds through our victims of crime legislation. People such as bank tellers and bus drivers are being discriminated against because they are not policemen or whatever.
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