Page 3043 - Week 08 - Thursday, 15 August 2019
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judiciary who bring not only a commitment to therapeutic justice but a certain personal touch to it. I wish Magistrate Walker a great deal of success in that role. I think that this court can be an important part of the ACT’s justice system.
Likewise I would like to acknowledge the positive work of the police minister in the recently released new direction for ACT Policing. Again, we are seeing really thoughtful work going into what justice means in the ACT and how we can make our community safer.
I note that the Attorney-General has provided additional support for community legal centres by increasing funding to Care Inc and the Women’s Legal Centre, as well as the introduction of an intermediary scheme in the ACT to help vulnerable witnesses, including children, people with disability and victims of child sexual abuse in their interactions with the justice system. This has been a clear recommendation of the Victims of Crime Commissioner, based on experience in other jurisdictions. I think it fits very well with the agenda that the Attorney-General has for us to be a restorative jurisdiction, one that seeks, as I said earlier, to think about what justice means and how we can deliver it for people in their various interactions with the justice system.
For all of the reasons that I have touched on—the direction of our justice investment work and our attempts to work with victims and various other people in the justice system—the Greens will be pleased to support this part of the budget. I look forward to, with my colleagues, rolling out this work through the course of the coming financial year and in future years so that we make Canberra a place that has good justice policy.
Proposed expenditure agreed to.
Community Services Directorate—Part 1.8
MRS KIKKERT (Ginninderra) (4.39): I begin by addressing safer families. Many everyday Canberrans are more than happy to pay the annual safer families levy in order to contribute to making our city safer by better responding to and preventing domestic violence. But community concerns remain regarding whether essential front-line services are receiving the support they need. These concerns have increased with the 2019-20 budget revealing that several safer families initiatives are on the chopping block. This budget shows the funding for five initiatives falling to zero dollars in 2020-21.
One of these initiatives, implementation of the joint Australian Law Reform Commission and New South Wales Law Reform Commission report on family violence, provided three additional staff involved in protection orders. According to what we were told in estimates hearings, one of these positions is already being cut this year. Another initiative, stronger criminal justice responses, added three staff to the department of public prosecutions. Similarly, it was confirmed in hearings that one position has been cut this year.
I attempted to find out from the Minister for the Prevention of Domestic and Family Violence how many more front-line staff will be let go resulting from these cuts in
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