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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 7 Hansard (24 June) . . Page.. 2386 ..

MR STEFANIAK

I know that this government is left wing. As such, it probably has a particular ideological bent and police probably do not register very prominently on the radar screen. But this is a crucially important matter. The men and women of our police force do, and always have done, a very good job. I think it is very disturbing in the extreme to hear of cuts, and especially cuts that impact at the operational level. I certainly want to put that on the record.

There is nothing particularly startling about the remainder of this part of the appropriations. Perhaps there could have been a bit more money for things like legal aid, which seems to be just treading water. I note that the Attorney has recently made an announcement in relation to Commonwealth and ACT funding. As I said, the rest of this line is fairly uninspiring. However, there are certainly some worrying aspects in relation to crime prevention projects and also the great inability to get proper data from our courts.

It was somewhat pleasing to see the government at least address the need for a new Supreme Court/Court of Appeal building. There are a number of ways in which that can be done quite effectively, and it seems the Attorney has changed his mind and his attitude about what he stated a couple of years ago. However, it is good to see that he has listed a priority in respect of capital works.

On the subject of capital works, it is disturbing, again, that the necessary disabled access improvements to the Supreme Court building have still not been made. The building is only 40 years old but it has a heritage classification and is difficult to deal with. The only disabled access is by way of a few ramps-one put in some years ago and one a bit more recently. There have been delays and work that should have been completed in this financial year will not be completed until January. So, again, there have been delays in this most important area, and that obviously affects the ability of people to use the courts. At this stage it is still impossible for someone with mobility problems to get up to the first floor to file documents, attend the registry, or whatever. So there are problems in relation to disability access.

If we are not going to get a new building in the immediate future it is crucially important to ensure that proper access is provided. Indeed, other works might need to be done. The building floods and there are all sorts of other problems in relation to liveability and operations. If we are not going to get a new Supreme Court building, these immediate and ongoing problems need to be attended to.

I would like to address Mr Smyth's amendment. I do not think the government's response to the committee's recommendation regarding the proposed human rights act is at all satisfactory, and some very interesting comments have been made in relation to that. The budget, of course, came out on 6 May and, lo and behold, on Wednesday 21 May the ACT Bill of Rights Consultative Committee brought down its report Towards an ACT Human Rights Act. It is rather remarkable that in the budget itself reference is made to a human rights act. The Chief Minister asked the committee to look at whether we needed a bill of rights, and at issues around a bill of rights, and it is interesting to note that the Estimates Committee stated that it was less than convinced by his answers in relation to the coincidence of this matter.

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