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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 9 Hansard (6 September) . . Page.. 2945 ..

MS TUCKER (continuing):

The other interesting aspect and irony of what can happen in this place is that yesterday we supported the Spent Convictions Bill, which provides that, with some exceptions, you cannot discriminate against people because they have committed a crime. Yet we are still allowing discrimination against victims of crime because it is obvious that members of the Assembly are going to support the inequitable situation that Mr Rugendyke, the government and Mr Osborne have created.

The other issue that we need to look at is retrospectivity. Although this will obviously be dealt with in my amendments, I think it is an important issue that we need to address at this stage. Basically, retrospectivity applies to the legislation. Entitlements under the 1999 act are based on the date of application and on the date of determination.

Victims of crime who lodged an application before June 1998 could be eligible for lump sum compensation whenever the case was determined. Victims injured at the same time but who waited until the injury stabilised, for example, and so lodged the application after 23 June 1998 could only be eligible for lump sum if the case were determined prior to 24 December 1999. Victims of crime who lodged applications after 23 June 1998 would only be eligible for lump sum compensation if the matter were resolved prior to 24 December.

In some cases, those lodging applications since June 1998 have been able to finalise their matters by court award, while many others have not able to do so because of matters entirely beyond their control. I refer to matters such as: the offender has not been dealt with by the court, perhaps because of a plea of not guilty; the failure of their medical condition to stabilise sufficiently for an award to be made; or a delay in the listing of the matter by the court. This disadvantage even extends where the agreement has been reached within the ACT government as to an amount of compensation and where the court had yet to ratify the agreement. Indeed, there have been completely different outcomes for a large number of victims who have suffered the same criminal attack.

Of course, the Attorney-General asserts that we have been on notice since June 1998. That may be. It is disingenuous of him, however, to confuse the intentions of government with the enactment of law. The law is the law, and the legal profession has a duty to its clients to interpret the law as it is. It was also well established at the time that there was considerable community opposition to these retrospective provisions. From the moment such operations were first mooted, voices were raised against it.

The strongest recommendation of the Assembly's Justice and Community Safety Committee report in June 1999 was that government not proceed with the retrospective operation of the changes. At no time did the government seek further consultation concerning the JACS Committee recommendation. At no time did the government advise that it proposed to adhere to the bill in its original form, and so reject the bulk of the committee's recommendations. Given that the government did not table its response to that report until the end of November and that it was not publicly known that the chairman of the JACS Committee would do an about-face on the issue of retrospectivity, there is entirely no basis in the Attorney-General's flip response that the lawyers simply ought to have seen it coming.

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