Page 2609 - Week 08 - Thursday, 30 June 2005
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of some 13 staffing positions. I suspect this year, from estimates, that the Magistrates Court will probably bear the brunt of that again.
The office of the Director of Public Prosecutions is being cut by around 12 per cent, or $742,000, as a result of cuts in the budget. The DPP, it should be remembered, is responsible for bringing all the prosecutions in the Magistrates Court and the Supreme Court in the ACT, and its smooth operation is critical to the administration of justice in the ACT. These cuts have slashed a small budget, despite there being increasing demands on the DPP.
I do not think it is good enough to say, as the Chief Minister said in estimates, that last year we had some extra costs in relation to, I think it was, Eastman and a coronial inquiry. I do not think the Eastman case is necessarily going away. You are always going to have those additional demands. Of course there is an increasing complexity in the criminal justice system, particularly in the prosecution of criminal offences. Prosecutors, moreover, are under increasing pressure to master scientific, technological and human rights issues as well as increasingly being obliged to assist courts, such as in sentencing proceedings. So-called reforms are adding to the pressures on the DPP. Staff are also being involved in work relating to the government’s appeal against Coroner Doogan that takes them away from other duties.
The annual report of the DPP notes that the realistic increase in the number of total charges before the Magistrates Court from July 2003 to July 2004 is around eight per cent. Within the particular offence categories, the most significant increase was in serious offences against the person. The DPP reported:
With each year the scope of core business expected from prosecution agencies grows. It is no longer the business of the prosecutor to simply appear in court and prosecute a brief of evidence (if it ever were so restrictive).
That is at page 16 of their annual report.
While I am sure there is much to be said for circle sentencing, which gets around $400,000 over four years in the budget, the reality is that what would have previously taken a prosecutor 15 minutes in court and preparation now takes up three hours of court time and several hours of work on the matter either side of the court appearance and resources to capture the relevant efforts to prosecute the various outcomes in order to measure and analyse that method of sentencing; yet the DPP has had its funding significantly reduced while having to do significantly more. That, I think, is going to be a significant problem.
Also, the way in which the ideological bent of this government impacts on the ACT’s bottom line and the emptiness of the rhetoric are nowhere near as apparent as in the case of $1.29 million being put up for the establishment of a commission for human rights to be presided over by a president who will coordinate the existing four commissioners, including a human rights commissioner, as well as a new deputy commissioner and a commissioner for children and young people. It should be remembered that such bastions of freedom as the former Soviet Union also had a bill of rights. Of course the problem with bills of rights is that by, prescribing freedom, they tend to limit and, as in the former Soviet Union, do not amount to anything other than a very deceptive brand of
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