Page 3007 - Week 08 - Thursday, 7 August 2008
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information or have had to request this information from another service. This situation is clearly untenable and impacts on the ability of the territory to protect children. The bill therefore authorises the Chief Executive of Disability, Housing and Community Services to access relevant information from court records about orders in circumstances where they are investigating a child protection matter.
The bill will also strengthen the protection of children who are named on an order in circumstances where the applicant wants to revoke that order. The very nature of domestic violence often lends itself to circumstances where an applicant may decide that they no longer require an order because relations between parties have improved. However, situations also arise where the respondent has placed pressure on an applicant to have the order revoked. If an applicant requests the court to revoke an order and children are also named on that order, the bill will provide an additional safeguard by requiring the magistrate to be satisfied that any child named on the order is no longer in need of the protection afforded by that order before it can be revoked.
The bill will also create a link between this act and the Children and Young People Act 2008 to enable the Childrens Court to make protection orders in circumstances where domestic violence leads to the psychological abuse of a child. The government is strongly of the view that adding the category of psychological abuse for children affected by domestic violence will provide an important tool in protecting children who live in violent households.
The current act borrows the definition of “domestic partner” from the Legislation Act 2001. As a consequence, boyfriend-girlfriend and same-sex relationships are currently excluded. The inclusion of these relationships is necessary because it is clear that they have similar dynamics to those relationships currently considered to be domestic relationships under the act. It has long been regarded by most people in our community that this type of relationship should be recognised by the legislation so that the same protections are made available to all people who need protection from violence in the context of an intimate relationship. Therefore, the bill now includes boyfriend-girlfriend and same-sex relationships within the meaning of the term “domestic relationships”.
Currently, the act allows for an order to be made against a child who is under 10 years of age. I have been made aware of circumstances in which this has occurred in the ACT. The government’s policy on this issue is that it is not appropriate for the act to make children under the age of criminal responsibility respondents to protection orders. The bill includes a provision to prohibit children under the age of 10 from becoming a respondent to an order.
To further improve decision making and the use of court time, the bill also includes provisions to give court registrars powers to consolidate areas of agreement and disagreement arising from the conferencing stage of proceedings. This information will be made available to the court when hearing the matter, and the aim of these provisions is to facilitate decisions where parties do not consent to an order being made.
The bill also creates new procedures to enable interim orders to be amended, to enable final orders to be amended and to enable a temporary amendment to a final order. The
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