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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2002 Week 10 Hansard (29 August) . . Page.. 3059 ..

MR STEFANIAK (continuing):

I note in some of the documentation that the government has not spent all of the money for the intervention programs to help reduce recidivism. Indeed, some of the money has been returned to Treasury, and the government says that is justifiable. I am interested in more detail on that.

It is important to have those programs and to invest money in them, and I am surprised that the money has simply been returned without an attempt to see if we needed to spend more money on them or if there were other appropriate programs that could be trialled. No such attempt was made, which reveals a significant lack of imagination, as much as anything else. I have some concerns because that was a positive initiative that could well have brought about some benefit.

I will mention some positive things now. I am pleased to see that the government at least seems to be taking some action to upgrade the Supreme Court building through moneys allocated in capital works to improve disability access. I am also heartened to read the transcript of the Chief Minister and Attorney-General. The Attorney-General seems to have gone back on the blunt and somewhat extraordinary statement he made in about May last year that he had no intention of even looking at the idea of building a new Supreme Court building.

I am pleased to see that he has gone there, talked to the current Chief Justice, had a look around and seen some of the problems there. No doubt he has also had the chance to talk to the department and look at the considerable amount of work that has been done to date on developing options, and I am pleased to see that he is starting to do that. It is a significant advance on the blinkered and knee-jerk "no way" reaction of last year and has certainly surprised some people present.

One of the briefings I had on that indicates a scheme that could be of great benefit to the territory. Whilst it is true to say that it is not a burning issue for the community-when people look at courts, they are much more interested in what judgments and decisions come out of them than what the building is like-there are real problems with the current building.

Firstly, it leaks and the basement floods. That was indicated by the government, and they have acknowledged disability access problems. There are also concerns about the layout and the fact that on occasions jurors are known to have overheard the accused talking to their counsel. In fact, that led to a trial being aborted in 1999 and similar problems. There are a number of problems, such as the lack of ability to separate the accused, victims and witnesses. Of course, the problems are compounded by the fact that the building has a heritage listing.

One suggestion I would commend for building a new court is to spend-and the figure quoted to me by the department was quite substantial-about $40 million, which includes the cost of refurbishing the current building to enable the Department of Justice and Community Safety and also the DPP to move in.

Currently those bodies pay rent. I am not sure how long the leases are, but at the end of that period, they could move in. I have been advised that that would save $2 million a year. You do not have to be an Einstein to work out that $2 million times 20 is $40 million and, allowing for the depreciation of any new building, the government

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