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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 10 Hansard (Tuesday, 24 August 2004) . . Page.. 4074 ..

defendant, making the defendant realise how appalling the crime was that the defendant committed and hopefully start a process whereby the defendant can go down the path of actually reforming and at the same time give some satisfaction to the victim as a result of that.

I envisage that for more serious offences that might well mean that the defendant would serve a period of incarceration but would benefit from this program, just as in New South Wales offenders who are about to be released pre-parole benefit from such a situation. There are safeguards in there, it would seem, to ensure that the process is managed very carefully. Everyone will go into it with his or her eyes wide open. That is important in terms of some other things that might flow from this process, such as the accused actually making an admission in relation to other offences during the process. People will not go into this process without their eyes open. They will have to be suitable and they will have to be assessed. There are a number of safeguards there. There are two filters, eligibility and suitability. There are some essential safeguards there.

I think that it is a useful scheme for not so serious crimes or crimes where a scheme like this can be used as an additional way of justice being done. I have given an example of a more serious offence where the person should go to jail and still would, despite some of the problems we see in our system. That might be an armed robbery situation, a manslaughter situation or some other fairly serious crime.

Conversely, there might be another type of situation—say, a young offender performs a series of break and enters and there is a confrontation in a house with someone and there is an assault as a result of that, an aggravated burglary type of situation—where this system is utilised as the victim is happy for that to happen and the young offender, as a result of this system, will enter into a restorative justice model that satisfies the needs of the victim, the needs of society and ultimately the needs of the offender. I can see the system being used appropriately as a non-custodial option in some circumstances.

I think that there are some big positives in relation to this scheme. I do not know that the attorney is right in saying that it is going to be used in 5 to 10 per cent of cases. We will see what happens there. But it does seem to be a useful adjunct to the criminal justice system, a system for which, sadly, for a number of reasons, there is a lot less respect in our community than there was even 10 years ago, certainly 20 or 30 years ago. It is a scheme with a lot of potential and one with which, as a result of the work done to date, it seems victims are pretty happy. Indeed, offenders who have been through something similar are fairly happy with it as well. So it is a scheme worthy of support.

The scheme features prominently in the sentencing package that the government released recently, a mammoth 2½-year effort which merely consolidates a number of acts and still misses the point on a number of serious issues, such as addressing adequate sentencing and adequate penalties for serious crime. A lot is made in that package of this restorative justice model. I would counsel the government not to expect this system to be the be-all and end-all. I would certainly counsel others on that, including a few Labor candidates who are very keen on this scheme and who have been writing glowing letters to the editor recently about what a wonderful idea it is. It is a good idea, but it is not the be-all and end-all.

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