Page 2712 - Week 08 - Wednesday, 10 August 2016
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language—are particularly vulnerable in our justice system. This investment is designed to address that.
We are also focused on improving equitable access to justice for people from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds as well as our Indigenous brothers and sisters. Some $50,000 has been provided in 2016-17 to help develop a common risk assessment tool for use by service providers. This will help us to ensure that we have a common methodology for assessing risks presented by perpetrators and the safety of people who are at risk. There is $15,000 for an awareness campaign to support better information sharing in relation to family violence cases and $20,000 for the fantastic Tara Costigan Foundation to establish the Tara’s Angels service.
Providing support for and addressing the over-representation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in the justice system remains a priority for the government. The government has expanded the restorative justice program with the commencement of phase 2, which provides for serious offences and for adult offenders to participate in the RJ process. To support this, the government is providing funding for a second Indigenous guidance partner to ensure that there are no gaps in support and opportunity for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander participants in the expanded scheme. This is critically important to make sure that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people receive culturally appropriate service and maximise the positive benefits that they can receive from the restorative justice process, and in particular as a form of diversion from the traditional criminal court process, criminal justice process, including the issues around over-representation of Indigenous people when it comes to incarceration. There will also be funding of $186,000 to continue the Galambany courts trial program to develop life skills for Indigenous people and to investigate options for supporting Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander families to reduce or prevent contact with the justice system.
I would like to also draw to the attention of members the initiatives in my portfolio that support high quality police and emergency services. There is over $3 million over four years for enhanced security and protective measures for ACT police, including improved personal protection equipment and the employment of additional protective service officers to help keep ACT Policing facilities safe in what is an enhanced and heightened security environment.
A number of initiatives will enhance and further develop our emergency service capabilities. An extra $5 million in recurrent funding and $4.3 million in capital funding has been allocated to the ESA. This will allow us to build a new ACT State Emergency Service base in Calwell, which will replace the existing temporary facility located in Kambah. I know this investment is being warmly welcomed by the south Tuggeranong community.
There is $2.5 million over four years to increase the capacity of the emergency 000 call centre and the non-emergency patient transport unit to make sure we can meet demand in this growing area of non-emergency patient transport and ambulance 000 call taking. There is $518,000 to upgrade the ESA’s website capabilities, which provide critical information, advice and warnings to the community during emergencies. There is also funding to support the emergency alert system, the nationally adopted telephony-based warning system.
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