Page 2576 - Week 08 - Thursday, 14 August 2014
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Justice and Community Safety Directorate—Schedule 1A, Part 1.16—$280,070,000 (net cost of outputs), $86,432,000 (capital injection), $158,301,000 (payments on behalf of Territory), totalling $524,803,000.
MR HANSON (Molonglo—Leader of the Opposition) (12.07): Madam Speaker, I rise to speak about this aspect of the budget that I know you maintain an abiding interest in. I will focus on a number of elements relating to the directorate. The first is in relation to sentencing. I welcome the fact that there is $734,000 over two years to reform sentencing and restorative justice arrangements and, I note, to conduct a review of these matters. I think that is welcome but it has been a long time coming. Indeed, this Attorney-General has been dragged kicking and screaming to the idea.
We have had several attempted and actual reviews of sentencing in the past. Indeed, one of the most recent reviews was the inquiry by the Standing Committee on Justice and Community Safety when I think you were chair, Madam Speaker, in the Seventh Assembly. That conducted an inquiry into the Crimes (Murder) Amendment Bill 2008. In its report on that inquiry, completed in August 2009, the committee made a number of recommendations in relation to sentencing, including:
The ACT government consider the need to undertake a general review of sentencing in the ACT.
It is good to see that five years on that recommendation has taken effect. We have had a number of legislative reviews of penalties and that has been a bit of a band-aid approach. I welcome the fact that we have an inquiry in the JACS committee. It is reviewing sentencing at the moment. There have been attempts over the years—certainly by the Liberal Party—to be more proactive and assertive and try to get some change to criminal penalties, but often at the resistance of this government.
The bottom line, though, Madam Speaker, is that everybody in the community—victims of crime, the legal profession, the DPP and the judiciary—has long been calling for sentencing reform. So let us hope that the reviews that have been conducted, both by the committee and also by the government, are actually resulting in sentencing reform.
Certainly, the victims of crime are complaining that justice is not being served in the ACT. We know anecdotally that criminals prefer to do crime in the ACT because the cost of crime is not as great as in other jurisdictions. After 13 years you have to question, although these reviews are taking place, whether any substantive reform will actually arise from them. But I remain hopeful. I am ever the optimist. I look forward to the government’s review.
But what I would say is that I want to make sure its findings are open and are provided to the community. We do not want a secret review from which the government cherry picks the bits that it wants. As the Attorney-General comes into the chamber, I reiterate that I hope the review he is conducting into sentencing at the community’s expense is made public.
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