Page 2037 - Week 06 - Tuesday, 4 June 2019
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important but are not appropriate for a stand-alone bill. Today’s amendments will help our tribunals and our commissions provide dispute resolution to the community. They will improve government processes so that they are more efficient, and they will ensure that our statute book better reflects the community’s values.
This bill contains a suite of amendments to the ACT Civil and Administrative Tribunal Act and the Human Rights Commission Act. These amendments ensure that the tribunal can make orders about conciliation agreements. Conciliation agreements are an important conflict resolution tool used by the Human Rights Commission. They represent an important form of restorative practice. The bill also deals specifically with agreements about discrimination and about retirement villages.
Conciliation agreements resolve complaints to the Human Rights Commissioner in a way that is respectful and mutually agreed between the parties. Effective conflict resolution is critical to building safe, supportive and connected communities. These amendments ensure that parties to a complaint who agree on an outcome during conciliation have an effective and efficient pathway to make the agreement enforceable through the ACAT.
The bill also extends the availability of jury exemptions to part-time workers and the teaching and emergency services professions. This amendment will ensure part-time workers in these professions are treated the same as their full-time colleagues. This represents a step towards gender equality, as the ABS data found that 45 per cent of women work part time, in comparison with only 16 per cent of men. This amendment also aligns the territory’s laws with the approach in other jurisdictions and ensures that people in these critical professions have equal entitlements. In ensuring that part-time and full-time workers are entitled to the same jury service exemptions, the government is demonstrating an important step towards gender equality in the workplaces of our community.
The bill also broadens the availability of family dispute resolution services at Legal Aid. Currently, Legal Aid are unable to provide family dispute resolution to individuals where no party has a legal aid grant. This amendment will allow matters to be referred to Legal Aid for family dispute resolution without the need for a party to have been granted legal assistance beforehand. This amendment improves the availability of access to legal services for people who risk falling into the justice gap. This gap represents people who are not eligible for legal aid but who are unable to afford private legal services.
While this amendment increases access to legal services for vulnerable families, the amendment also has cost benefits for the community as a whole. Protracted family law disputes can adversely affect children, parents and the community by increasing demands on health services, social services and the education system, as well as the legal system. Providing early dispute resolution will reduce pressures on other parts of our community and help to curb families from undergoing lengthy legal disputes.
The bill also seeks to improve the safety of Canberrans by strengthening the requirement for the government to respond to coroners’ reports raising matters of public safety. The amendments will ensure that a minister must table a government
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