Page 1914 - Week 06 - Thursday, 5 May 2005
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Commissioner for Children and Young People. In fact, my colleague Mrs Burke suggested that there should be a commissioner for the family. But we do have a problem with having this new bureaucracy with its own president. One of Bob Carr’s criticisms and my own criticisms of having a bill of rights, or in this territory a human rights act, is that it adds an extra load of bureaucracy for no real benefit. We have yet to see, and I suggest we will never see, any real benefit from having a human rights act in the ACT. It means that each government department will have to concentrate more and more on attending to the needs of the Human Rights Act with fewer resources as the bureaucracy is to have 260 positions cut. More of the scarce resources of each department will have to be used to fulfil the requirements of that act.
What does that mean? Does it mean that ultimately more people will have to be hired, at additional cost to government? Certainly, having those people do things in relation to the Human Rights Act will require extra resources and cost government extra money. The Human Rights Commission is just a rhetorical flourish—a statue, in effect, to the desire of the Chief Minister to make his mark. It is not going to make the ACT a better place or improve the access of the people of the ACT to justice. It is not going to do one thing to reduce the number of burglaries, robberies or assaults in our community. In fact, it could be said that the reverse will be true. The act panders to an excessive extent to the rights of criminals, to the detriment of the ordinary law-abiding citizen.
There is a need to look at the cuts that the government is making in this budget that will have an effect on the pointy end of justice in the ACT and have a real impact on people. Take a look at page 339 of budget paper 4. The Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions will take a cut in its relatively small budget of around $750,000 next financial year. That is about 12 per cent of the budget of the DPP. It will decrease from $6,497,000 to $5,755,000. The office is responsible for bringing all the prosecutions in both the Magistrates Court and the Supreme Court in the ACT. Its smooth operation is critical to the administration of justice in our territory.
It is all very well for the Chief Minister to say that its costs are reverting to normal. As the annual report for last financial year will show, the demands of the DPP are not shrinking and there is no indication that they will shrink in the next financial year. If anything, it looks like they will get more and more complex and there will be more and more demands placed on that office, as has happened year in, year out for the last few years. What is the government doing? It is cutting expenditure in that area of its small budget by three-quarters of a million dollars and increasing it in another area which, I suggest, will do diddly-squat of real benefit for the people of the ACT.
Members will note as well on page 339 of budget paper 4 that the courts and tribunals will receive a cut of around five per cent in the forthcoming year. I will be interested to see where that cut is proposed to be made because it does come on top of the $900,000 ripped out of the Magistrates Court last year, which resulted in the loss of 13 staff positions. It will be interesting to see where that further cut will fall there and how many more staffing positions will be cut. Is that something that will have an effect? I suspect that it will have an effect. The last staffing cut certainly caused some concerns to the Magistrates Court.
I will mention circle sentencing, as Mrs Burke has done. I think that it is a worthwhile initiative. I have absolutely no problem with the government putting in an extra $100,000
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