Page 2747 - Week 07 - Wednesday, 6 June 2012
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have actually spoken to official visitors and others who have been involved in the other jurisdictions as well to seek their feedback. It is just something the ACT, for whatever historical reason, does not have here. And we believe it is something important.
Dr Bourke said, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” I know he qualified that statement, but the perception of independence, particularly from people who make complaints to official visitors, is important. I think it is important that the people who are making those complaints and the official visitors, who are set up to assist, actually have that view. I think that has become one of the clear things as to why we do need this.
To make it clear again—and this is primarily in relation to some of the comments that Dr Bourke has made—the primary reason we have official visitors here is to assist consumers and ensure they are being treated fairly, not just to be the eyes and ears of government and the minister. Yes, it is important that they report directly to the minister—and that provision is still there in our current bill—but the official visitors need to be there to assist the vulnerable people that they are set up to assist, and that is what we are making sure occurs with this bill.
I have a couple of points on what Mrs Dunne raised. She did say she had concerns about why we need to legislate. Again, the only role that is not legislated in the ACT currently is the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander official visitor, which will now occur with this bill. Again, as I have pointed out, this is something which is in place in other jurisdictions. So it is important to point that out.
The reason why it has been legislated in the past and why we feel it needs to be legislated is to ensure that we have that security, I guess, that that role will exist, that it is there in legislation, but it is also able to—I think these were the words used—provide the teeth to official visitors if they require it. That is the important reason why we have legislative roles already for the other official visitors and why we believe it is important to have those roles for disability and homelessness.
On the government’s comments about the official visitor for disability, particularly comments Mr Corbell made that they still did not think it was appropriate to have an official visitor for disability and that they were setting up the community visitor scheme, I went along to the first information session that was held by the department about having the community visitor scheme and it was quite clear, as Mrs Dunne has said, that the two schemes were practically identical. When someone asked what was the difference, basically the departmental representative’s answered, “It’s just a difference in name only.” I do have to say that I am somewhat cynical because for probably about a decade we have had the government saying, “No, we don’t need a disability official visitor,” and when the Greens’ bill came forward the government then started developing a community visitor scheme.
It is quite clear, from being at the information session, that they borrowed quite a lot from the Greens’ paper. A lot of the information put forward was actually from the Greens’ paper. In fact, there was not a model in mind that they had, when we had been consulting quite extensively with a number of groups about the sort of model they wanted. And that is what we have come forward with in this legislation.
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