Page 3751 - Week 11 - Tuesday, 24 September 2019
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ability to move offenders back to their appropriate jurisdiction. I will briefly touch on these.
The functional amendments include purely technical amendments such as removing duplications, some consistency in amendments to fit the new court to powers in other acts, and procedural amendments such as a provision that states that when a DATO is completed a good behaviour order is still required to be served.
Based on various briefings, it is reported to my office that the functional amendments have arisen since the government appointed the Chief Magistrate, Lorraine Walker, as the appointee to supervise the drug and alcohol court. From feedback from various stakeholders, the government felt it would be better policy to include any suggestions in the first passage of the legislation rather than amend at a later date. We agree with this approach.
The other area of amendment is the ability for the drug and alcohol court to refer the matter back to another court, as appropriate. As initially drafted, an offender had to effectively remove their matter from whatever court they were in and then apply to the drug and alcohol court. If that offender was deemed to be not suitable for a treatment order, there was no mechanism to refer the offender back to the original jurisdiction.
While the amendment applies to all offenders, this situation was seen as particularly problematic for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, as they would lose access to the Galambany Court by choosing to apply to the drug and alcohol court. This effectively meant that they had to choose between one or the other. The government has picked up on that and proposed this appropriate amendment. The amendment allows the presiding officer of the drug and alcohol court, if and where appropriate, to refer the matter back to the original jurisdiction. We support that change.
I said a little earlier that the introduction of the drug and alcohol court will not be without some trial and error. The Canberra Liberals will not use this as an opportunity for political opportunism. These are appropriate amendments. They are things that have been picked up to improve the court. We are not going to be in this place to play gotcha politics, to criticise the government for not getting it right in the first place.
Equally, as this court rolls out, there may be mistakes made. There may be errors. We accept that. What we will look to see is that the government will then acknowledge those, will provide the correct amendments, including, perhaps, legislative amendments in this place so that we get it right. Often an innovation like this will take some time to bed down. We acknowledge that; we accept it. On this side we will not be playing gotcha politics as this rolls out.
However, I reinforce the point that I made that we will not accept a lack of funding as an excuse for the enablers of this sort of program in terms of rehab services. We are very happy to work with the Attorney-General’s office and with his staff as problems arise. If we become aware of problems, we are very happy to make sure that we get
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