Page 4626 - Week 11 - Wednesday, 19 October 2011
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MS LE COUTEUR (Molonglo) (11.34): I will speak very briefly on the subject. What we have been talking about in terms of legal aid for criminal cases is of course incredibly important and very much deserving of this Assembly’s support. I would like also, though, to touch on some of the other work of community legal centres, specifically EDO and potential planning issues.
As you are probably aware, the EDO is funded basically not by the ACT government but by the commonwealth and deals with environment and planning issues. This is an area where we have some of the best paid lawyers working on planning issues. They are working to make sure that they can get the absolute most out of anything in the planning system. They put a lot of money on this. Unfortunately, the community, if they wish to try and preserve the amenity of their neighbourhood or disagree with planning decisions, are not, generally speaking, in a position to employ the sort of firepower that the other parts of the planning industry can. It is a real lack which should be considered in the context of community legal centres.
The community needs access to some sort of independent, impartial advice about legal issues with respect to the physical parts of our community, not just the human parts. I agree that the human part, the criminal law part, is vitally important and needs to be supported, but the environment and our planning system do too. I would just like to put that forward in terms of any further discussion about community legal centres.
MR RATTENBURY (Molonglo) (11.36): I want to speak briefly on the amendments, Madam Deputy Speaker. The Greens will not be opposing these amendments, although I would like to make a couple of observations about remarks that have been made during the course of the debate.
When it comes to changing the date of reporting back to the Assembly to March 2012, I have some sympathy for that. But it is interesting. We have had the minister stand up and say: “We have done all this work on it. We have a working group established. They are identifying solutions. They met with stakeholders last month.” They are all positive things, but the estimates recommendation was made in May—May this year—and it suggested a response by December. That is an extensive period of time in which to get back. And now we are finding that we need an extension because we have not really done the work. It is one of those questions: which is it? Is all the work being done? Does the government have a commitment to doing it? Or has it had it on the back burner and it has taken another motion of the Assembly today to get it done?
The other concern I have in pushing it out to March 2012 is that we all know what the budget cycle is. We know that by the time we get to March next year, frankly, most of the work has been done. Budget cabinet meet right through the early part of the year. In fact, they have probably already started, I suspect. If we are serious about trying to get this into next year’s budget, we are already up against the wall now, because we are not going to get the information.
Suddenly, we will get this great report back that says that if the government just had this amount of money we could do something really successful and innovative. That might be an outcome, and that would be terrific. We would all be sitting here thinking,
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