Page 2463 - Week 07 - Thursday, 27 August 2020
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Questions without notice taken on notice
Health—testing of quarantined travellers
Ms Stephen-Smith (in reply to a supplementary question by Ms Lee on Thursday, 2 July 2020):
All passengers have been compliant with their quarantine responsibilities and no individuals have left their hotel room other than to request assistance. These small number of individuals were provided the required assistance and reminded to not leave their room unless in the event of an emergency.
ACT Health—child sex offences
Mr Ramsay (in reply to a question and supplementary questions by Ms Lee and Mrs Dunne on Thursday, 30 July 2020):
Child abuse is unacceptable and ensuring the safety of children in our community is a high priority for the ACT Government.
The ACT Government is unwavering in its commitment to protect children from sexual offenders and to ensuring that perpetrators of such offences are held accountable. There can be no clearer demonstration of this than our response to the Royal Commission on Institutional Reponses to Child Sexual Abuse. Our response shows our strong, unambiguous commitment to protecting children, and righting wrongs. It demonstrates our intention to effect cultural change within organisations and the broader community, and to ensure the failures of the past are not permitted to continue. The response to the Royal Commission’s 85 criminal justice recommendations demonstrates our clear commitment to improving the ACT criminal justice system’s response to child sexual abuse, through both legislative and non-legislative reforms. This includes reforms which:
• strengthen requirements to report child sexual offending – with an offence for failing to report child sexual abuse (with no exceptions for information disclosed in confessions);
• introduce new grooming offences;
• create a new offence of failure by a person in authority, in a relevant institution, to protect a child from the risk that a sexual offence will be committed against the child; and
• improve court and evidence procedures to better support victims to give evidence, including a new intermediary scheme.
In relation to Mr Burch’s matter specifically, as the Chief Minister previously advised the Assembly, his convictions were for Commonwealth criminal offences and he was prosecuted by the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions, albeit in the ACT Supreme Court.
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