Page 2437 - Week 08 - Tuesday, 9 August 2016
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the Assembly since presentation and to talk publicly to the need for these amendments to pass in order to respond to certain specific cases sooner rather than later. Ideally, it is always preferable to give the community time to absorb any such legislative changes, but I am advised that there is broad support for the need, and high confidence in the ACT Health Protection Service in particular to ensure that we are seeking enforcement of this nature as both a last resort and in conjunction with the appropriate support services.
Clause 5, which amends the act to make it an offence regardless of whether the person intends to cause an insanitary condition, raises some challenging issues about personal responsibility and understanding of the nature or severity of impact on others. Indeed, it raises issues of criminal responsibility and understanding of right and wrong, considering that it is accepted that most acts of hoarding occur as a mental health disorder aligned with obsessive compulsive disorders.
However, the proposed code of practice, the strong community advocacy expressed in the Canberra Living Conditions Network members and other providers, and the ongoing functions of the hoarding case management group or its future iterations, provide me with assurances that, again, criminal or punitive sanctions will be the absolute last resort, particularly for socially isolated or otherwise vulnerable people.
As I have said in a range of debates that may be seen to encroach on vulnerable members of our community this year, the ACT Greens will maintain our connections to community service providers and remain open to reviewing or seeking further amendments at a later stage if the application of the bill does not turn out as it is envisaged.
I also appreciate that the new sections relating to abatement orders maintain the oversight and decision-making power of the Magistrates Court, which is also a clear acknowledgement of the potential complexity of these cases. In a similar approach, it is also positive to allow for the proposed new code of practice to be a disallowable instrument, thereby ensuring the ongoing attention and consideration of the Assembly.
As I have said, it is a credit to ACT Health that they have spent the time and energy to work with a range of government and non-government agencies to engender this level of trust and professional respect, such that a bill like this could be presented and debated in such a short period. The ACT Greens will therefore be supporting this bill, in recognition that any actions taken under this new triage of responses will be similarly in the same vein of consultation, collaboration and coordination.
MS LAWDER (Brindabella) (10.54): I am pleased to speak today on the Public Health Amendment Bill 2016 which amends the Public Health Act 1997. Specifically, the bill seeks to amend the act to allow the minister to determine a code of practice setting out guidelines for the Chief Health Officer about the public health management of insanitary conditions caused by hoarding and domestic squalor, to improve administrative mechanisms so that the ACT Magistrates Court can respond to allegations of insanitary conditions, and to correct an oversight in the structuring of an offence provision for causing or suffering an insanitary condition.
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