Page 285 - Week 01 - Thursday, 11 February 2016
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with the outcomes of restorative justice processes. That is the key indicator. Victims themselves say, “This was a good process, it was a process that allowed us to face the offender, to require them to understand the harm that had been done, to require them to make recompense, to require them to make apology, to require them to deal directly with the circumstances of their offending behaviour.” Victims consider this mechanism, restorative justice, to be very effective.
The ACT is very much leading the way when it comes to restorative justice. We are expanding its application to adults for serious crimes and we are also going to expand it to adults for domestic and family violence matters where that is appropriate. In many circumstances, particularly for those most serious matters, it will sit alongside the traditional, conventional criminal justice process and it will involve requirements for people to be convicted or to plead guilty to particular offending behaviour before they are able to participate. But it is about restoration for victims. That is what is important about this scheme.
If victims are treated better by our criminal justice system through restorative justice and if all the evidence suggests that that is the case, we should be seizing the opportunities that it presents. I am very pleased that this bill establishes the legal framework for that to occur. I thank members for their support of the bill and I look forward to its implementation in the coming months.
Question resolved in the affirmative. Bill agreed to in principle.
Leave granted to dispense with the detail stage. Bill agreed to.
Human Rights Amendment Bill 2015
Debate resumed from 7 May 2015.
Detail stage
Bill, by leave, taken as a whole.
MR CORBELL (Molonglo—Deputy Chief Minister, Attorney-General, Minister for Capital Metro, Minister for Health, Minister for Police and Emergency Services and Minister for the Environment and Climate Change) (4.30): This bill is brought back to the Assembly today following the results of the Standing Committee on Justice and Community Safety’s inquiry into the bill. The standing committee made a number of recommendations in relation to the bill.
Overall, the committee supported the Assembly passing this bill today. The reason for that is that the bill does two particularly significant things. The first is that it places a binding duty for public authorities to comply with the right to education, as set out in the Human Rights Act. That means that public authorities can be held to account by
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