Page 1158 - Week 04 - Tuesday, 10 April 2018
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Minister for Mental Health) (11.56): I would like to speak in support of the Justice and Community Safety Legislation Amendment Bill 2018. The amendments to the Crimes (Restorative Justice) Act 2004 extend reporting time frames within that act. Restorative justice is an important process which responds to wrongdoing and seeks to repair harms suffered by actively involving the affected parties in respectful dialogue and decision-making. It is a voluntary process that gives victims an opportunity to have a say about what happened to them, to get answers to their questions and to have their losses acknowledged after experiencing crime. Offenders have an opportunity to accept responsibility for their actions and to actively contribute to repairing the harm caused by their offence.
The ACT’s restorative justice unit is responsible for convening conferences between victims of crime, offenders and their respective communities of care. The unit receives complex referrals from a range of referring entities, including ACT Policing, ACT Corrective Services and the law courts. Since its establishment in 2005, the unit has received over a thousand referrals from ACT Policing alone. More than 15 face-to-face conferences have been held in the Alexander Maconochie Centre since adult offenders first became eligible for the scheme in 2016.
2018 will be a milestone year for restorative justice in the territory. The unit is actively preparing for the third phase of its scheme, which will provide access to restorative justice for victims of domestic and family violence and sexual offences. This development means that victims of all offences will have access to restorative justice, and reinforces the ACT’s status as a national leader in the use of restorative justice practices.
The act currently requires the restorative justice unit to provide quarterly statistical reports within seven days to all referring entities on the progress of the matters they have referred. The number of referring entities to restorative justice increased in 2016 when referring entities specific to adult offenders began referring to the scheme.
With the increased workload associated with the restorative justice unit’s recently expanded jurisdiction, and as it consults on expanding its jurisdiction further to include family violence and sexual offences, this is a good opportunity to adjust the quarterly reporting time frames so that they are more appropriate. For that reason, the bill increases the reporting time line in the act from seven days to 14 working days. This will better allow the restorative justice unit to fulfil its statutory reporting requirements and ensure that it can continue to effectively provide its core service of convening restorative justice conferences.
The bill also includes amendments to the Heavy Vehicle National Law, firstly to extend the time frame in which regulations under the Heavy Vehicle National Law are to be tabled in the Assembly, and secondly to apply two national amendment regulations.
The Legislation Act 2007 requires subordinate legislation to be presented within six sitting days of notification. However, as regulations under the Heavy Vehicle National Law are notified in New South Wales, and there is no automated system to advise the ACT of their notification, applying the standard time frame under the Legislation Act
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