Page 1979 - Week 07 - Tuesday, 5 August 2014
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community, particularly through the new elected body, in resolving the governance and other issues that have created problems with the current AJC and to establish a new community-driven and governed framework for the delivery of those important Aboriginal justice services in our community.
MADAM SPEAKER: A supplementary question, Mrs Jones.
MRS JONES: Minister, what were the reasons leading to the termination and the problems that have been referred to?
MR CORBELL: Fundamentally, the inability of the AJC to meet the deliverables set out in its funding agreement with the government.
MADAM SPEAKER: A supplementary question, Ms Porter.
MS PORTER: I presume this is to the attorney. What other strategies are being implemented to reduce the over-representation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people that Mr Wall mentioned in his initial question?
MR CORBELL: I thank Ms Porter for the supplementary. The government remains very committed to addressing the fundamental causes of over-representation of Indigenous people in the criminal justice system. We have had for a period of four to five years an Aboriginal justice agreement with the broader Indigenous community in the ACT, which is designed to set out a whole range of steps and actions to address over-representation driven by disadvantage suffered by Aboriginal people in our community and their interaction with the criminal justice system.
That justice agreement has been the subject of significant negotiation and reformatting for a new justice agreement, which we will now be pursuing with the new elected body, now that the new elected body has been elected and is establishing its portfolio responsibilities and preparing to engage with the government. I want to congratulate those new, as well as those returned, members of the elected body. The government’s commitment is to work with them on the finalisation of the justice agreement. Our commitment is to work with them and seek their guidance, views and advice on how we can re-establish a framework for an Aboriginal justice centre in the ACT, because it is a critically needed service. It needs to be community owned and community driven, and it needs to be delivering the outputs that we need to support Aboriginal people when it comes to the problems they face in interactions with the criminal justice system and their over-representation.
We need to tackle the issues associated with reoffending behaviour. We need to tackle the issues with disadvantage that lead to offending behaviour. These are all key issues that we are committed to continuing to address, in engagement with the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community in the ACT.
Taxation—payroll tax rate
MR SMYTH: My question is for the Treasurer. Treasurer, in a 17 June 2014 article in the Canberra Times, you were quoted for having “pointed out that the ACT
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