Please note: This is an extract from Hansard only. Hansard extracts are reproduced with permission from the Parliament of Tasmania.

FAMILY VIOLENCE BILL 2004 (No. 87)

Second Reading

[5.52 p.m.]

Mrs JACKSON (Denison - Minister for Justice and Industrial Relations - 2R) - Mr Speaker, I move -

That the bill be now read the second time.

Tasmanians have been waiting a long time for comprehensive reform on family violence. Every one of us knows someone affected by family violence. Family violence happens behind many closed doors in our community, regardless of the suburb, the income or the car that sits in the driveway. Family violence does not discriminate.

I would like here to pay tribute to Fran Bladel who was probably my mentor, or one of my mentors, in this area. She was always a great fighter for women and children who have been sufferers of domestic violence.

Before I and other Labor women entered this Parliament in 1986, domestic violence barely rated a mention in the House and it certainly was not a subject of choice for the media. Women were left to suffer their fear and their injuries alone in silence with no-one giving them a voice.

Over the years governments have taken small steps forward, scraping together piecemeal funding for ad hoc initiatives. Now, for the first time in Tasmania's history, we have a comprehensive, whole-of-government response to family violence with Safe at Home.

Finally, Tasmanians have a response that is real, that is adequately funded, that elevates family violence to the top of the Government's agenda. It is an unacceptable tragedy that lives have been lost to family violence and it is to those women who are no longer with us that I dedicate these reforms.

These women lived lives that many of us cannot begin to imagine, in a world that responded to their plight with silence. It is my hope that the Government's reforms will help victims of family violence to become survivors.

I do not expect that we can change the horrifying reality of family violence overnight but I am determined that these reforms will be the first step. It is a big step in a concerted whole-of-government effort to bring about genuine change in community attitudes and behaviour in relation to family violence, changes that I hope that will make a real difference to the lives of many Tasmanians who live with the threat of violence every day. I hope these changes will break the silence of violence and the cycle of violence so that our children can grow up in an environment that is safe and that gives them the solid grounding they need to take on the challenges of adulthood.

Children who are too scared to go home every day are not getting the best chance in life. Children who grow up in violent homes are more likely to be violent as adults, and violence in the homes spills out into our community. If we can help our children to grow up in a safe, secure and stable home environment, then they have a better chance of making the most of their lives and we have a much better chance of reducing violence in our community.

To stop the cycle of violence through generations, we must act now. Ending the cycle of family violence is everybody's responsibility. It is my hope now that the Tasmanian community will work together to make sure our children have the best chance in life. I would like to pay tribute to those who have worked tirelessly over the years to support victims of family violence.

There are many selfless social workers and others in the Government and in the community and they are the unassuming members of our community who have quietly stepped in to help relatives and friends who have run away and hidden. They have helped get children to new schools, they have helped furnish new homes, they have treated cuts and bruises and they have been there to hold a hand that needed to be held.

The Family Violence Bill comes after many months of work and consultation across government and following a major consultation process involving the whole Tasmanian community.

The public process started with the release of the Safe at Home options paper in August 2003. As members will be aware, the Safe at Home model provides a framework for a criminal justice response to violence in the home that is pro-arrest, pro-charge and pro-prosecution. The Safe at Home paper was the subject of extensive community consultation and a series of regional forums in late 2003.

Most people found this agenda challenging, some found it threatening, but when we asked the community last year there was overwhelming support for a criminal justice system that would treat family violence seriously and take it for what it is: a crime.

Safe at Home makes an important contribution to one of the highest priority Tasmania Together goals. Goal 2 is 'to have a community where people feel safe and are safe in all aspects of their lives.' If Tasmanians cannot feel safe in their own homes, and within their own family relationships, we have no chance of ever achieving that goal. To show just how serious it is about this, the Government has committed $17.7 million over four years to the Safe at Home strategy.

While today we are here to talk about the Family Violence legislation, the Safe at Home project is a lot more than the 43 clauses we are about to debate. I think it would be helpful for members to have some of that context before I speak about the bill in detail.

Tasmania's first 24-hour crisis line for victims of family violence came into effect from 30 September 2004. For the first time ever, a family violence response and referral line is being staffed 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, including public holidays.

The role of Tasmania Police is crucial to the success of these reforms and it has already made major changes to its service response. There are already victim safety response teams with specially equipped vehicles established and on the ground in each of the four police districts. Their members have been selected on the basis of their policing experience and interest in the issue of family violence. Each officer has also undergone extensive additional training, focusing on crisis support for victims and managing safety issues to enable the victims of family violence, wherever possible, to stay in their own homes. One hundred police officers will be trained as specialists by March 2005, and 85 per cent of all police statewide will receive training in delivering Safe at Home responses such as risk assessment and safety auditing. An additional six police prosecutors are being recruited to cover the increased workload arising from a pro-arrest, pro-prosecution approach and the introduction of family violence orders.

Some of the additional funding commitment has gone to ensuring that the courts can deal with the increased workload resulting from a higher level of prosecution activity. A new court support and victim liaison service is assisting victims through the legal and court processes. Court support workers are already operating in the northern and southern regions, with a north-west worker and a specialist Aboriginal court support officer commencing shortly. The service will provide information and referrals to other services for family violence victims. This includes the Legal Aid Commission of Tasmania, which is funded to assist all eligible victims of family violence. The first full-time Legal Aid lawyer has already been appointed. It will also provide information and support to the children who get caught up in the legal processes surrounding family violence, often as witnesses.

A family violence adult victim support service will provide an enhanced counselling and referral program to adult victims of family violence, including a new telephone counselling service that will be accessible to victims, irrespective of where they live in Tasmania.

Again, children will be a special focus through the Children's Counselling and Support Service, which is a specialized counselling and support service for child victims of family violence. It will provide early intervention for children living with violence in order to reduce social, emotional and behavioural problems.

We are also introducing a program to assist offenders who are assessed as suitable to undertake rehabilitation. We recognise that some perpetrators removed from the family home will have difficulty in obtaining appropriate accommodation and this issue is being addressed through an accommodation brokerage for perpetrators of family violence.

All of these initiatives have required a huge amount of work across government, first to manage a project of this scale, but also to develop protocols between agencies to ensure that there is clear understanding of the roles and responsibilities of each service provider to minimise the possibility of victims falling through gaps.

Interested community groups have been and continue to be consulted on a regional basis to keep them informed about the project and to discuss the impact Safe at Home will have on those groups. There has also been ongoing consultation with the Aboriginal community and there will also be consultation with key refugee groups about Safe at Home.

The service delivery changes started in September this year but there are some things that cannot happen until the legislation is in place.

I will now run through the major features of the bill. The bill defines family violence. The legislation is limited at this stage to violence between spouses or partners - including same-sex partners. It also includes former spouses or partners.

It is important to understand that this bill does not deal with the direct abuse of children - that will continue to be covered by the Children, Young Persons and Their Families Act. In the same way, child protection services will continue to be delivered through the Department of Health and Human Services. Safe at Home and this bill recognise that children are affected by family violence, even when it is not directed at them specifically.

I have already spoken about the Children's Counselling and Support Service and the Court Support and Victim Liaison Service. The additional thing the bill does is to make sure that children and other vulnerable witnesses can give their evidence by video or with other special support in place.

The bill creates new offences of economic abuse and emotional abuse or intimidation. This underlines the fact that family violence does not always take an overtly physical form and that it can involve a range of behaviours aimed at isolating the victim and undermining their capacity to take independent action. During consultation on Safe at Home, the Government received overwhelming community support for the inclusion of economic and emotional abuse as offences in this bill. There has recently been criticism of these offences and some people have run arguments that these provisions will allow domestic partners to exploit the law and exploit the police and the justice system to make mischievous accusations about each other. I reject that argument and I am disappointed that the suffering of this category of victims of family violence is being trivialised.

There is nothing in the bill which overrides normal prosecutorial discretion. If abuse is determined to be real, charges will be laid. By the same token, courts will make a judgment about the penalty which is appropriate in each case - up to the maximum of two years imprisonment. I cannot see any possible basis for comparing the penalty for common assault, as some people have tried to do, with a pattern of behaviour which is calculated to keep a spouse or partner in a state of fear for a period of years. The creation of offences of economic abuse and emotional abuse are critical if we are to take a more holistic view of the nature of family violence and offer our community the best possible protection against its many forms.

The test is whether the behaviour is calculated to unreasonably control or intimidate the victim. Obviously a course of conduct must be coupled with the requisite intention for the offence to be made out. Tasmania is not alone in imposing this change. I am aware that Western Australia has passed laws that contain provisions that define ongoing intimidation or emotional abuse as forms of domestic violence.

I have already stressed the importance of police in the family violence strategy. The bill sets out police powers in relation to entry, search and arrest in family violence cases. These are similar to current powers in relation to restraint orders in the Justices Act 1959, including some of the wording that has been objected to by certain commentators. It was a deliberate decision in drafting these provisions to stick closely to the restraint order model in most cases as those provisions have been thoroughly tested over the years.

The bill gives statutory recognition to the processes of risk screening and safety audits, which are important tasks of the new police victim response teams and underpin the whole Safe at Home response system.

There is a presumption against bail. Bail for family violence offences is not to be granted unless the court is sure that victims' safety can be ensured. Again, this has come in for some criticism but I make no apology for it. The aim of the Family Violence Bill is to give priority to the safety, psychological wellbeing and interests of people affected by family violence. We've been perfectly up-front about that; it is in the objects of the clause. There is no point in the legislation having those aims but then letting violent individuals back out on the streets when we cannot be confident that their potential victims can be safe.

Contrary to claims and assertions in the legal profession and some interstate civil libertarians, presumption against bail for certain offences is not a new concept. Indeed, the New South Wales Bail Act of 1978 and the Victorian Bail Act of 1977 both incorporate much broader provisions for changes to domestic violence than those provided by the Tasmanian Government. Western Australian and the ACT have similar provisions. It is within this legislative context that I found the assertions being made to be quite misleading.

All members of the community have a right to expect that violent members of our community, who have been assessed by specialist officers as likely to reoffend, be detained. This detention is necessary in order to protect the victims and the general community from their conduct. This is the role of the police and they need to be supported in delivering this objective.

Police will have the power to issue a police family violence order, which is similar to a restraint order, for a period of up to 12 months. Where all the parties consent, such an order can be varied by a senior police officer but if there is a dispute about an order it can be reviewed by the Magistrates Court. The court can also issue its own family violence orders. These can be for a specified period or indefinite and again they are reviewable.

One of the aims of Safe at Home is to ensure that the suffering of victims of family violence and their children is not aggravated by having to leave the family home to avoid further violence. The emphasis will be on rehousing the offender and keeping the living arrangements for the rest of the family as close to normal as possible. In some cases this might be assisted by putting the existing lease into the name of the spouse or partner who is staying in the family home - especially where the tenant is being excluded from the property.

The court will have the power to make an order of this type but there are some important safeguards for the owner of the property:

the property owner will have the right to be heard before an order is made;
the original expiry date for the lease will not be extended by the order;
the normal rights to terminate a tenancy, for example for non-payment of rent, will not be affected.

Breach of a family violence order or an order made by the court is a specific offence in the bill. The maximum penalty for breach of an order escalates with repetition of the offence.

There will also be a regime of mandatory reporting by a wide range of professionals who are likely to become aware of cases of family violence through their work. These provisions are modelled on the existing arrangements for reporting suspected cases of child abuse.

After recent discussions with the Sexual Assault Support Services, I have decided to remove the reporting obligation for employees and volunteers in private and public organisations providing health, welfare, education, child care or residential services. This is a change from the bill which was circulated to members last week. The obligation of employees and volunteers in those organisations does not, however, change if they are in one of the professional groups specifically listed in the bill.

The Government's position is that family violence and child abuse have two important things in common: they are both generally carried out in private and their victims are often afraid or ashamed to speak out. It has been suggested that mandatory reporting will put professionals in breach of privacy legislation. This is not the case: both the Commonwealth Act and the Personal Information Protection Bill recently considered by this House have specific exemptions for disclosures of personal information which are authorised under another law or to prevent a threat to life or health. I understand that the mandatory reporting requirements have caused some disquiet within the community sector generally and I understand this is a confronting concept for victims and others to come to grips with. However, I remind the House that the most significant change of the Safe at Home model is that the community becomes responsible for the violence. The victim is no longer alone in dealing with violence in their relationship. Supporting them will be trained professionals who can help them make the very difficult decisions that will change their lives for the better.

Family violence is a problem that belongs to the community and therefore demands a response from the community. In this response I believe the professionals, such as doctors, psychologists and police have an ethical responsibility to report the violence.

The bill makes some changes to sentencing regimes. The presence of a child, for example, can be considered as an aggravating factor in sentencing for family violence. Courts will also be able to sentence offenders, including young offenders convicted of family violence offences, to attend a rehabilitation program if they have been assessed as suitable.

In the consequential amendments, a new crime of assaulting a pregnant woman is inserted in the Criminal Code as there is evidence that family violence commonly escalates with a partner's pregnancy.

This is not the end of the process. We recognise that in making such a major system change we may not get it perfect the first time. It would be my intention to make any amendments which can be demonstrated to be necessary after a reasonable period of operation. We will also be giving consideration to extending the coverage of the act to violence within the wider family, for example a grandchild violent towards a grandparent. This work will take place once the legislation and associated system changes have been bedded down.

Before I close, I would like to extend my personal appreciation to the officers in the Department of Justice, Police and Public Safety, particularly Liz Little, who has followed this for nearly as long as I have, 10 or 20 years or more, and also Women in Tasmania, the Department of Health and Human Services, the Office of Aboriginal Affairs and Premier and Cabinet. They have committed a great deal of their time and energy to Safe at Home and this bill. It is a fine example of what can be achieved when the silos are broken down and the survivors of family violence will be forever in your debt.

I commend the bill to the House.

[6.13 p.m.]

Mrs NAPIER (Bass) - Madam Deputy Speaker, I rise to support the Family Violence Bill on behalf of Her Majesty's loyal Opposition. This side of the house would prefer that the bill had been withdrawn to allow for better consultation on the legislation itself. The minister herself would admit that over the past fortnight there has been quite some sharp debate about some of the elements of this legislation emanating from the Law Society, individual lawyers who have approached us, service providers and a number of different groups that are identified as being mandatory reporters and had no idea that they were likely to be so identified. Admittedly many of them had not read the Safe at Home report.

I think a number of editorials responded to that debate, perhaps initiated first by some extremely strong comments from the DPP who seemed to find it necessary to go public over the fact that, within the bureaucracy, the views of both the DPP - it would appear from his comments the police but I am not to know that for sure - and other senior bureaucrats were not being heeded.

There may well be another story to that but the fact was that he felt sufficiently strongly that several times he went public with his concerns about that, and I will refer to some of his criticisms later. But also the editorials. For example the editorial of 14 September criticised the minister, rightly or wrongly, and said that she had handled the issue poorly. Most importantly in this editorial in the Examiner , it was indicated that the public must have confidence in this new legislation. It is very radical legislation. It does go a step further than the existing situation within the legal system, but it is to tackle a growing and emerging problem within the community. Some might say it is better reported now, though I am not necessarily convinced of that when we look at the increasing incidence of reporting of domestic violence. But we needed to ensure that people who were to implement that legislation and to live within it - that is, the community as much as the legal practitioners and service providers - knew exactly what was planned, that they had had reasonable input and knew why their views had been rejected. A further quote from the Examiner is from that editorial on the same date:

'The public, the legal fraternity and, most importantly, those involved in coping with and resolving domestic violence, are entitled to know just what is planned.'

It did appear as if the Attorney-General was trying to shield a divisive but also a flawed proposal from that public and legal scrutiny opinion.

However, if you wish to persist with this bill, Minister - and I have heard nothing to say that you might withdraw the bill; I still believe that you should - we will make some important amendments as we strongly support the need for better laws and services to deal with domestic violence. We will support the bill, but with a sunset clause, because we believe it is important that with such a dramatic change in some natures of the bill, certainly those involved with proactive arrest, bail conditions and so on, it is important to review that, to do as ACT have done and really assess in a very detailed way the impact that the incidence of domestic violence, the potential to respond to domestic violence and so on is having upon our community, so that we can assess how effective this legislation is and whether some finetuning is required. The minister herself says that once this legislation and the systems are bedded down, it would be the Government's intention to perhaps finetune the legislation and the systems involved. We agree with that, and that is why we will be putting forward a sunset clause as clause 44 that this be done within three years of the first implementation phase of the bill.

Mrs Jackson - That means it expires and we won't have any legislation.

Mrs NAPIER - No, it won't because we will get it done before. That means that governments cannot postpone it.

Mrs Jackson - It's virtually the whole bill.

Mrs NAPIER - I sometimes refer to the fact that as a State Liberal Government we committed that in 1999 we would do a full socioeconomic analysis of the impact of gaming upon the community, and we intended that to be so, but we did not write it in as a sunset clause so that it absolutely had to happen. That is why we are putting in a sunset clause, because we insist that that happens. We made it three years so there is at least time to implement the legislation, to review it and to have data available. I am sure that you will be monitoring all aspects of this legislation and its implementation as part of that finetuning process. And it may be that in three years' time no change is made, or it may be that we actually finetune it.

Mrs Jackson - Yes, but the bill lapses with the way you have done it. We won't have any legislation.

Mrs NAPIER - Well, that will be our responsibility when we are in government, Minister, to make sure that as the sunset clause arrives we will have completed that review and we will have made whatever amendments are required to that legislation to ensure that it passes so that there will be no lapse in the legislation being delivered.

Mrs Jackson - You just want to destroy it.

Mrs NAPIER - Family violence has been an unspoken crime in our community for far too long. Successive State and national governments have tried to change the community's attitude towards domestic violence, to demonstrate not only the emotional and personal destruction and harm that impacts on families and children, especially when they are involved, that emerge from domestic violence but also the economic impact of domestic violence. Papers and programs have been produced but the problem is still there.

State and national governments have also tried to change attitudes, provide support and intervention to deal with domestic violence and disruptive and destructive family behaviours through the media, through counselling, through mediation services, through parenting support programs but the problem is still there. They have also tried to provide support and intervention through domestic violence crisis support counselling and accommodation programs but the problem is still there. The ongoing pattern of an apparent rise in domestic violence within our community is reflected in the State Government's own police benchmarks - there is an interesting debate as to whether quotas are going to apply to benchmarks, how they will be assessed and whether it is good or bad if there is an increase in the number of domestic violence arrests that are made. That is relevant to the comments that I am going to make later about what the downside of police intervention is and the difficulty of achieving that balance of whether to intervene or not.

But the State Government's own police benchmarks and the recently provided Health and Human Services annual report show that domestic violence is out of control and also associated with that the incidence of child abuse is drastically increasing and to some extent there is a relationship with child abuse. Certainly there is a direct relationship between domestic violence and child health.

There also have been the very sad deaths of seven women in the last three years in domestic violence situations. The increasing realisation that the impact of domestic violence is more significant than previously realised on children and young people, some of whom have seen more violence in their first three or four years than many other people see in a lifetime. I brought into this House one case of a young mum who had a little boy who was in exactly that situation and she was finding it almost impossible to get a house under the public housing regime but finally managed to get her house after five months of representation. That highlights the need for all systems to be able to respond to the victims and the children of domestic violence.

I did not hear about the issues associated with access to housing for people escaping from domestic violence situations in other States. I think that is something else that we will need to look at.

We have also had recognition over the past 12 to 14 years that a coordinated response best reflected in the Duluth model was likely to have greatest impact on arresting and responding to domestic violence incidents. However, economic stringencies of the mid-1990s limited the ability of governments to implement such a resource-intensive strategy. However, the ACT has done so and recent reviews have endorsed most of the programs, although raising some very important questions that I am going to make some brief reference to because that, in turn, influences our decision to have a three-year sunset clause.

Both the national and State economies have significantly improved over the past five years and we now see massive surpluses annually at the State government level and we congratulate the State Government on its announcement of a $17.7 million over four years investment into this area. True, it was some six years after it was promised in a time of economic growth and growing surplus budgets and we were disappointed that it had taken so long but we have it here. It is important that we move as quickly as possible but, as we said it is pity the legislation was not out there for feedback for a longer time since the Safe at Home Program was out in August 2003.

That Safe at Home options program was well received. The feedback was predominantly supportive of the adoption of a criminal justice response. It is worth noting a couple of the issues that are raised, such as the need to link with family law and associated programs. There is some link, I agree, with external court orders and I think that is very positive. Personally I would like to see the automatic referral of a restraint order from the Family Law Court across to the State system. Maybe the minister could explain why we are not able to do that and I will certainly raise that in committee. The Family Court and the associated programs are the key forum for the consideration of family and partnership conflict and breakdown. That is part of the Family Court, and it was interesting to see that the North West Domestic Violence Service referred to that. It noted that the emphasis is to resolve situations, to remove the issue of blame as far as is possible, thus providing an environment conducive to negotiating matters such as custody, property settlement, access and so on. That is one of the key reasons that we are going to move for the deletion of clause 8, because we believe that if economic abuse is resulting in intimidation and emotional abuse, then it will quite well be covered under that clause, but otherwise points of economic dispute are better dealt with under the mediation services that are provided through the Family Court and related services than under the Criminal Code. We may agree to disagree on that, but that is the rationale for doing so.

Mrs Jackson - Well, there's no rationale in that at all.

Mrs NAPIER - Minister, you will have your chance. I listened to you in silence.

Mrs Jackson - No, you didn't, you were talking.

Mrs NAPIER - Mediation and positive solutions are very much the emphasis coming through from the Family Law Court, and we do not believe that Parliament should think that everything can be solved through the criminal law courts, and in this case we do not believe that economic abuse can be dealt with by this mechanism.

Further, the possibility of the escalation of conflict and confrontation because of some of the provisions in our legislation was being flagged by others, and I do not think we should discount that, because once the police intervene, a police family violence order or a court family violence order is brought about. Certainly if the police initiate the charge to be proceeded through with the court there is not going to be much of a relationship left. There will be very little opportunity for mediation and for seeing whether the relationship can be maintained.

That was reinforced more recently by the Law Society, but interestingly it was reinforced by the report What Do Women Want? by Holder and Munstermann 2002, and I have been doing some reading of the report by Robyn Holder, the ACT Victims of Crime Coordinator in the ACT, and Nicole Munstermann, the Family Violence Prosecutor in the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions, when they looked at What do women want? Prosecuting family violence in the ACT. The report, which I am sure is open to all members to read, was presented in Sydney in 2002. They basically said they are three years on, they have some tremendous data about the relative effectiveness of the reforms that they have introduced in the ACT, and overall they found that the legislation and the programs have been effective. But they do say - and I quote from one section:

'But has it got us any closer to knowing what women want from the criminal justice system? In the beginning we thought we knew, and then we did not. Now we think it is what so many women and children have been saying year in, year out for decades all over the world, and that is they want the violence to stop.'

And they say -

'We are not yet confident in claiming that the criminal justice system can be effective in getting the violence to stop.'

And they discuss on page 3 the issue of victim reluctance in proceeding with prosecutions. And it said that where you are dealing with an ambivalent or reluctant witness, when you proceed with no-drop prosecution policies - as also are included in some US jurisdictions - you can actually end up with further system abuse, as much as there might be the original family abuse.

So I am not saying that we should not proceed with this legislation for that reason, but I am saying that there is good argument to take into account what the Law Society is saying, the questions that they are raising, and what reviewers of people who are further down the track than we are at this stage, as in the ACT, are saying. This issue also came up in the Australian Domestic and Family Violence Clearing House papers. Again it was by Robyn Holder, and I am conscious that it is the same reviewers who are raising these issues even though they refer to many other references. Issues paper 3 deals with domestic and family violence, criminal justice interventions and they raise that question of system abuse where it is pro-prosecution.

I think we need to take account of that as being issues to be looked at. There is a very strong call from the Southern Domestic Violence Co-ordinating Committee in their representation on this matter for domestic violence courts and that also fits with the points being brought forward by lawyers and the Law Society that a great deal of the problem and, from my observations, the almost absolute waste of time in going and getting a restraint order at the moment in the current Tasmanian system.

Mrs Jackson - We're trying to fix that.

Mrs NAPIER - I know you are. But what we are saying is that part of the major problem is the delays in the court system and the tendency for magistrates not to pay due attention to what a restraint order is about; that magistrates take statutory declarations on their word without cross-examination because, after all, people do lie in such declarations and those kinds of issues.

Your legislation addresses some of those issues. In your second reading speech, you said you are going to put resources into the courts and into the prosecution section of police and so on; that is absolutely vital. The Law Society would say, 'Well, that is even more vital than this legislation', but I do not totally agree with them. I think there is a need for a proactive approach in relation to restraint orders but I think because it is such revolutionary, if not radical legislation, we need to watch its impact very carefully. Again that calls for some answers: what the answers would have been to the Law Society from the minister, what the answers would be to magistrates - and with due deference not just to Mr Shott but also to other lawyers who have raised the question of why we have to go into this proactive regime when improvement of access to courts and improvement of the restraint orders themselves could have resulted in improvements to the system that would provide better justice to the people who suffer from domestic violence.

Importantly, too - and I am pleased to see in the second reading speech that the minister referred to this - this is not just about women and children, it is also about men. Not just those men who are in significant relationships but also the number of instances - and it is a small percentage, I know - where men are the victims of domestic violence.

So generally, Minister, people supported your policy and then, sadly, when the legislation arrived you blew it. You blew it because you did not make sure that there was a good external consultation with the Law Society who have very real and genuine concerns or the Council of Civil Liberties. You did not talk to the AMA about their views in relation to clause 38. They raised with me their very real concern, especially as it relates to rural doctors; they are saying that their being mandatory reporters may be the very reason why the women do not come to them in the first place and usually it is the same doctor who is dealing with the man and the woman. They were not at all happy about being identified for reporting.

They justify it for child abuse but they could not see the need to do that as a mandatory requirement for adults. You have acknowledged the concerns of the Sexual Assault Services but that is what happens when you listen to people. You ask people, 'Well, what are the good sides and the downsides of mandatory reporting?' There is a real concern that the victims will not go for help and in fact there are even some concerns that they will not call the police because they will be worried about police taking things out of the victims' hands and deciding to go ahead with an action regardless.

I think that is a very real risk and something we really have to watch, and I am sure the police would take that into account too in terms of the decision they make about whether to take action or to caution. It is their right to caution, or to take the offender with them to bail or not, all of those kinds of issues. Not just the victim but also the children are going to be impacted by that too, and so often in the child abuse area you see many children will not report because they do not want their mum, dad, uncle or whoever it is, taken away.

That does not make it right but it is an impediment to the system if people fear what the consequences of reporting are going to be because, as the Holder and Munstermann Report shows, they want an intervention that will cause the violence to stop. They do not necessarily want their partner to be sent to jail or to be sent away from the household. There is the difficult judgment that we all need to be conscious of - the policeman, whomever and, in this case, the mandatory reporters.

Teachers - has anyone talked to the AEU about this? You have not talked to the AEU and they have gone and got a copy of the legislation because they had no idea until this morning that teachers were actually referred to in it. I am sure there are many other professionals who will be a bit surprised when they find that they are suddenly mandatory reporters and are going to have a huge fine on their hands if they do not report. I would have thought that at least there would have been a letter sent to all the professional organisations of those professions that are listed under clause 38 to say, 'What do you think about this? We are going to list you, what do you think about it?' What would be wrong with consulting with those professions?

At least let Parliament be informed on what is wrong. I would be very interested if the minister would indicate which professional associations and groups you have consulted with as to their views on mandatory reporting. Have you consulted with them and what did they say? Within the public sector, Minister, the comments of the DPP are all I can go by and it appeared that a number of senior public servants felt that their input was not being listened to, particularly the highest law officer in the land through the DPP.

Minister, what he said was not mild. He used such terms as 'it will distort the criminal justice system' - this is a reference to economic abuse and emotional abuse. He referred to 'enormous departures from the accepted checks and balances in the criminal justice system to propose to give police judicial powers in this way' and of course there is the question that they have raised and the Law Society have raised: are we going to end up with a High Court challenge on this? What advice, Minister, have you got from the Solicitor-General - I think it is clause 11 that this relates to - on whether we are going to end up with a High Court challenge over giving judicial powers to police? Will it be able to be implemented or not, or are you going to have a victim who will end up with a three-or-four-year, drawn-out process because you did not check that this was going to be acceptable under the High Court?

Whether they are right or not, the Law Society has said, 'Couldn't the police have rung up the magistrate or whatever to get approval for a police family violence order?' I am not sure if that would have worked or not, but if that would avoid a High Court challenge, I would sure as hell prefer to see that in the bill now than wait three years down the track when we have to amend the legislation. I want to know what the Solicitor-General's advice is on that because that seemed to be the issue that Justice Mary Gaudron would have raised. Certainly the Law Society do not want to be stuck in there in the High Court having to argue for this issue when they could see another practical way by which you could achieve the same objective.

Worse, Minister, when people did raise their concerns, you immediately blasted them as condoning domestic violence. Well, I can tell you, when you did that to the members of this House and particularly tried to suggest that the male members on this side of the House condoned domestic violence, you got it badly wrong, Minister. This side of the House does not condone domestic violence but we do want a workable legal system by which this can be done.

Mrs Jackson - You haven't said one positive thing about the bill yet.

Mrs NAPIER - Well, you were not listening quite obviously and you have blocked ears and you are not listening to the fact that we want to get this legislation right -

Mrs Jackson - Yes, and so do we.

Mrs NAPIER - and what we are being critical of are a number of the things that you did not cover off. You are the minister, you were the person who needed do that.

Mrs Jackson - That's what you say.

Mrs NAPIER - The editorials say it, Minister, that you got it wrong by trying to suggest that anyone who raises the question must be in opposition and what did you say? You are either with us or you are against us.

You said that about the DPP, you said that about the Law Society, you have inferred that about anyone including Ms Putt and myself who raised some genuine questions about some aspects of the proposals that you had. You did not need to do that because we wanted to be supportive of this legislation but when you put a bit of legislation out and you've got your own DPP and the Law Society raising significant questions about it, why wouldn't you quickly get to them and see if you couldn't at least acknowledge those issues? When we find that there are other professional organisations you did not consult either, then that is not unreasonable, we ask the question and didn't you hear, Minister, we are going to support your legislation.

Mrs Jackson - No, you're not.

Mrs NAPIER - Oh, you did not hear. Didn't you hear, Minister, we congratulated you about the $17.7 million over four years? Didn't you hear, we have said a lot of positive things about this legislation? Didn't you hear me say that I was supportive of a proactive approach to domestic violence particularly physical domestic violence? You didn't hear that several years ago, you didn't even hear that in the last couple of weeks. All you wanted was for us to roll over and say, 'I don't care if it's bad legislation, I'm going to support it, this is bad legislation but in principle I agree with it, therefore I will tick it off'.

Well, there are going to be a couple of amendments that we are going to put forward. We are going to highlight, as I am doing now, what the real concerns of lawyers are, what the chance is of a High Court challenge because we do not want a victim of domestic violence to have to be waiting around while there is a High Court challenge on your legislation, Minister. That would not be fair to the victims of domestic violence; the police do not want that, they have enough problems in trying to serve restraint orders under the current system and they may well still be struggling to do that under family violence orders but that is the nature of the system.

You have some great improvements to the whole issue of how you make sure that offenders get police family violence orders but also the court-ordered family violence orders, some very good reforms there to make sure that the offender cannot run away and hide. Some police, I was reading in the feedback, said, 'Quite often you are knocking on the door and you want to serve them a restraint order and the offender is looking at you through the door and laughing at you, telling you they are not there'.

There is some really good stuff in this legislation but there are a couple of aspects that the Law Society has some worries about. It does not mean to say you have to agree with everything the Law Society says but you should have had that debate and you should have allowed them earlier access to the legislation.

Mrs Jackson - It wasn't ready.

Mrs NAPIER - In this legislation, police in effect become the gatekeepers of the criminal justice system. Many will argue in favour of that proactive arrest, proactive in pursuing charging but, as I said, there are warnings.

'There are some who argue that policies such as mandatory arrests prosecution and reporting have become a standard legal fare in the fight against domestic violence and which category ignore the battered women's perspective can themselves be forms of abuse.'

That is Linda Mills (1999) referred to on page 10, issues paper page 3 in that Australian Domestic and Family Violence Clearing House and that came up as part of the review of the ACT.

This is not to say that I am not going to support the bill but the issues that are coming through to us in feedback on the bill highlight the potential for escalating the conflict. One of the issues raised is that compared to the current situation where police can be called in to intervene and stop the violence and often bring the offender to their senses, this system really takes it out of the victim's hands. And there are instances where domestic violence might have occurred, the police are called to intervene, and the offender is mortified that the police have been called in to their house because they lost control. It does not make it right that they lost control, but the very fact that they are so mortified that they lost control and the police were called, might in itself cause the person to realise that they have to get some help and do something about it. The strategies of the Domestic Violence Crisis Service and others - practical assistance, counselling, harm minimisation - have certainly been a feature of the system up until now. One of the things we have to monitor, Minister - and I am sure you will - is whether this proactive approach that we are about to introduce will in fact escalate the conflict, exacerbate the relationship breakdown that might well be a source of the domestic violence to which the police are called. So the escalating conflict issue does need to be taken into account, because the real deficit in our system is that restraint orders are not enforced, there are delays in getting to the courts, and not an opportunity for cross-examination, lack of resources in prosecution, lack of equipment and training to gather evidence at the scene.

I think from what I hear there is some very good stuff going on with police in the equipment they are being provided, given that a number of other States and countries have come up with some great equipment that can help you prove the case, making sure you can get the evidence that you need, but also the training to deal with and downscale the behaviour. But also there has been a dismissive attitude of some police and magistrates who do not treat domestic violence seriously. Your bill will certainly change that, and I think that is very important.

So we need to watch this very carefully as to where the cut-off is between what the Family Law Court are trying to do, where there is an attempt not to infer blame, and what this bill is doing. Hopefully what I have said thus far will deal with that.

On the issue of providing protection from false or contrived claims of family violence, we will be circulating an amendment -

Mrs Jackson - We already have it. It's already in the legislation.

Mrs NAPIER - Well, I just flag that we would do that. If you can point out to me where that is dealt with in the legislation, I am happy not to proceed with that.

Mrs Jackson - Not in this but in a lot of other legislation.

Mrs NAPIER - But at this stage I will certainly be flagging that we have a number of amendments. We only have three amendments to the whole bill, but it is our intention, where we have some concern - clause 11, for example - we are going to flag that concern, listen to your answers, look at how you are going to monitor the issue and then review. We will pick that up and legislation will come back to Parliament, at least within three years, and we can see how badly - or hopefully, how well - it might be operating. One of the things we do know is that it will result in loss of employment, loss of face for the offender. The impact on children I have already raised. And if you are unfairly accused, removed, and have a police family violence order against you, certainly if you have no bail and you are waiting until a court can hear it, the impact of that - you have lost your job and lost face within the community - is pretty horrific. I think we just have to balance that a little bit.

In fact I will take a quotation from a very well-respected leader and parliamentarian, now retired, who wrote a very good paper on this, even though I would not agree with the amendments he might have wished to have.

'Perhaps the most difficult lesson for parliamentarians to learn is that it is simply not possible to resolve all of society's shortcomings with the passage of a piece of proscriptive legislation.'

And I think we should keep in mind that legislation will not fix everything. I accept the rest of your package will help.

Mrs Jackson - Most of this is already the law in Tasmania, if you only realised that. It's not new law.

Mrs NAPIER - So in terms of definitions we will remove 'economic abuse', because we believe that has been covered by 'emotional abuse or intimidation'. We have actually been told by the Law Society and lawyers that it would be impossible to prove anyhow. I will just raise a couple of the issues of the Law Society and my colleague may well raise them at greater length. One of the issues, as I have said, is lack of consultation. The Law Society were given just a week to deal with it before it was to be debated. They raise the issue of court delays - that certainly has to be looked at. They say the offences of 'economical abuse' and 'emotional abuse or intimidation' as dealt with in clauses 8 and 9 of the bill are unknown to the law in any Australian jurisdiction. That in itself does not lead to the conclusion that those offences should not be created. However, 'the elements of those offences as set out in those clauses will clearly make it impossible for any court to reach a conclusion beyond a reasonable doubt that any of these offences have been committed in any particular instance'. That is a pretty strong statement and I will be very interested to hear what the minister's response is to that particular part. They raised the concerns about clause 10 and in particular said that there is a better method by which you can deal with that, including getting on the phone to a magistrate to issue a family violence order. They raised that question about the High Court challenge.

They have some questions on the bail issue although I have noticed that the police handbook on 7.3.9 basically says that if you are worried about whether a person is likely to re-offend, you would not let them out on bail. If they would only do that on restraint orders right now, we might be in a better situation.

Mrs Jackson - Exactly. Well done. Now we are getting somewhere.

Mrs NAPIER - Why don't you get rid of your bitter pill and just realise that we are not disagreeing on everything? The other issue that they rightly raise is that they are concerned about victims not reporting because of the proactive nature of the bill and I do think in addition to the issue that they raise about the need for increased court resources they certainly need to be taken into account.

Mr Deputy Speaker, I have taken the time to put on the record exactly what our concerns are about this bill; I indicated the amendments and I have circulated these to the minister and to the Greens before we commenced the bill. I would hope that people would entertain those aspects.

It is a joke you say. Well at least realise that we are trying to make sure that we get exactly the best bill that we possibly can.

Mrs Jackson - I didn't say it was a joke at all.

Mrs NAPIER - Now we do support the bill. We are desperately and very much supportive of not just good legislation in domestic violence but also about getting it right but also, having said that, we would have preferred it to be withdrawn for better consultation. But even if the minister does not think so, we will still be supporting the bill.

Time expired.

[6.53 p.m.]

Ms PUTT (Denison - Leader of the Greens) - Mr Deputy Speaker, the Greens are extremely pleased to see this legislation come before the Parliament today. And I might say that I recognise that the minister has had this reform at heart for many years. Indeed I believe that it was one of the reasons she saw fit to run for Parliament in the first instance: that there should be reform to laws in relation to issues affecting women and in particular the matter of family violence.

There is, unfortunately, still at this time a real need to tackle the culture in our community in regard to family violence. We have made great strides from the days when it was something that was not even talked about, when whatever happened in the home was deemed to be private behind closed doors and nobody else's business, although there are no doubt some people who still hold that rather antiquated view.

However in our society we still have a situation where in many households there are patterns of behaviour which continue over years and years of systematic abuse, physical, emotional, economic, of those who are powerless in those households. It is the ugly side, the unacceptable side of human behaviour in this society and it is something that we, as legislators and as elected representatives of all the people, including those who cannot yet vote, and those who are powerless and who really need our help, must take action over.

This legislation is groundbreaking and because of that there is inevitable controversy. The educative initiatives that are being put in place by the Government under the Safe at Home initiative are really important as are of course the range of support mechanisms for victims and, for that matter, the mechanisms in relation to changing the behaviour of perpetrators.

As I said, we need to take leadership on family violence, all of us here, and I think the fact that all three parties are supporting this bill is very important. We all recognise the need to act and I think in many ways it is this type of legislation that unites us in our humanity and where we can step aside from petty political pointscoring to recognise how fundamental this sort of action is.

It is Greens' policy that we make substantial change in this area in domestic violence. Under the principal section of our election policy program in 2002 it said:

'The Greens are committed to a society in which all people have the right to live in a safe environment free from fear or abuse and to the prevention of violence through elimination of its causes as well as protection from its effects.

The Greens are committed to the long-term elimination of domestic violence, the support of victims of violence, the apprehension of perpetrators of violence.'

Under the rationale we discussed the fact that domestic violence may be defined as behaviour adopted by a person to control their victim or victims which results in physical, sexual and/or psychological damage; forced social isolation and economic deprivation. So we clearly flagged our recognition that family violence is not simply physical violence but has broader and also very damaging ramifications in the area of emotional abuse and economic depravation and abuse.

These are very real aspects of family violence and I suppose people who have not come across instances might be tempted to make rather facile comments about the provisions in this bill but for anybody who has been there or come across people who have been there, this controlling behaviour and the emotional and the economic aspects of family violence are the ones that most often will not be occasional outbursts. This will be behaviour that is perpetrated on a daily basis as controlling behaviour and worse - to completely deprive somebody of their ability to act as a unilateral human being, essentially; to cause them to become a person who cannot have their own independence but is completely controlled in their ability to interact with the outside world, in their ability to leave their home and go and do what we would think of as normal activities. That is the extent that it gets to - people who cannot make phone calls, who have no access to their own money, who are in isolated, rural situations where they cannot even let anybody know that they are imprisoned in their own home and who may also be subject to appalling levels of physical violence and to warped thought processes that are being put upon them to try to make their behaviour conform to some peculiar view of the perpetrator. It is very real and it is the most disturbing and appalling thing that anybody should think they have the right to treat other people like this and that it is okay to do this to your nearest and dearest, to people you claim to love; to even claim that it is done in the name of love. It is something that really has to be dealt with and this cannot come soon enough.

Of course there is controversy here, as I said. That is because this is new for people in terms of legislation. Because it does take that strong line that where we have issues of human rights, we have to look at countervailing human rights and have a presumption in favour of the powerless, in favour of the victims and that is very challenging for people. There is also controversy that arises because there is concern over whether the provisions that are in this bill are workable and I think that needs to be listened to but it does not need to overcome the importance of getting this legislation into place.

There are difficulties that have been expressed to me and I will talk about those in a moment. But first I wanted to go through some of the matters that the minister raised in her second reading speech. Firstly I wanted to recognise the Safe at Home initiative more generally and indeed the work that has gone on in relation to consultation throughout the community on that. The minister supplied me with a list of the people and organisations who had given feedback in the consultation period on the Safe at Home initiative. I think there were upwards of 60 or thereabouts, groups and individuals, who had input in that way. It was very important that people get to grips with the policy. I think where, perhaps, some of the problems come in is that there is an issue about the difference between policy and initiatives generally and then seeing the particular way that those are written into legislation. In some cases I think the debate that we are hearing is about whether it is the most effective way to do it, not whether it should occur.

Mrs Jackson - Yes, its mechanism.

Ms PUTT - Certainly where the Greens will express concerns in the clauses will be in that light. We might want to draw to your attention, Minister, that we have had expressed to us that this may not prove workable in this form, that we are going to want to see an assessment of whether it has been effective. I know you have already acknowledged in your speech that it will not be perfect first time round because of the nature of major system change like this and you have indicated your intention to make amendments that are demonstrated to be necessary after a reasonable period of operation. I am grateful that that appears there and I think obviously that is reasonable because, let us face it, we all want to see this thing work and we all want to see it work in a way that will be accepted generally in our society.

In relation to this major initiative which is across government, it has been an extraordinary project to conceive of and to manage with all the different protocols between the different agencies and the need to work through who will have what roles and responsibilities and how it can all be integrated. We hear about the areas in which there are deficiencies and I will have to address those but I wanted to say here very clearly that it has been a fabulous body of work and it is going to be so good to see all these pieces fall into place in the jigsaw puzzle of how we deal with family violence.

I am very pleased about the ongoing consultation with the Aboriginal community and key refugee groups, in other words some of the groups in our society who are not necessarily the mainstream who may have unique perspectives and cultural issues that will need to be understood and embraced in the way the objectives of this act are carried forward. I know that some of the service delivery changes have already started but we need the legislation in order to go forward.

I wanted to quickly acknowledge your moves to put in place a referral line that staffed 24/7 the initiative for victims' safety response teams and the training that officers in the police force are having so that we are getting the caring side of the police force here, I guess, as well as the strong-arm side, focusing on crisis support for victims and managing safety issues to enable victims of family violence wherever possible to stay in their homes.

It is an expensive initiative to train police officers as specialists but it is critical. Again and again we have heard over the years the stories about how police have not understood - I am sure that is not true of every officer but there has been an issue there that has needed to be dealt with. It has been recognised, it is happening and it is so good to know that that training is now going on with the police so that they can do things like risk assessment and safety auditing.

A major significant part of this legislation is that we will no longer see the victims, predominantly women and children, out of house and home and suffering even further because they were unfortunate enough to be the victims of family violence. We have training here for police in relation to the actual mechanical things that need to be done to make sure that people can feel safe in their home, as well as the broader systemic change to say it is the perpetrator who needs to be removed from the situation, not the victim who has to go elsewhere for refuge as a matter of course. No doubt circumstances will still arise where refuge is sought. There will always be the need for those sorts of supports as well, but we have a fundamental culture change here that is really at the heart of this thing.

Mrs Napier - That will take a while.

Ms PUTT - Change cannot happen overnight. It will take a while, but it cannot take too long. That is why we have to start now. That is why we have to have provisions in here that for some people are confronting, because we are actually saying in this legislation - and this is where it is a leadership role - there are things that are not on any more. There are ways of thinking about relationships, power and control that have to be rethought. There is socialisation that needs to be deprogrammed and worked through again. These are very deep-seated things, and you can only do so much in legislation, you can only do so much in a government program, but if you do not do that, then you really vacate the field.

I think a lot of it is going to come down to people such as ourselves with individual advocacy as we find ourselves out and about talking to people who bring the issues up. That is how change happens, conversation by conversation, as well as by example.

Mrs Napier - We won't say 'you're either with me or agin me'.

Mrs Jackson - I didn't ever say that, Mrs Napier. I never said that. Why do you want to be so confrontational?

Mrs Napier - You did say that.

Ms PUTT - A new court support and victim liaison service is to be commended, as is a family violence adult victim support service and, very importantly, children's counselling and support service. For many years I have been concerned, when I have heard people talk about the victims, that they have not included the children necessarily in that, and for young ones who are only just figuring out what the world is and how it works, how you relate to people, who is in control, all those issues as they grow up, it is their socialisation. For those children to be in a family violence situation obviously is extraordinarily distressing and can be extremely damaging.

But it is not as if perpetrators are just shunned, locked up and the key thrown away or whatever. That is no solution to making change in our society. So I am really pleased to see programs to assist offenders who are assessed as suitable to undertake rehabilitation. It is vital. Also I am pleased that there is actually going to be accommodation brokerage for perpetrators of family violence, so that perpetrators who are removed from the family home, who have difficulty getting appropriate accommodation, can actually have that issue addressed through this brokerage. It is a caring thing whilst it tries to make change.

I said I would not speak for too long, so I had better not get too wound up. Of course we need the ability to intervene at the pointy end when there is a violent situation going on within a home, and there are new provisions here in relation to entry, search and arrest in family violence cases, and the ability to enter premises, to arrest and then to have a perpetrator held.

We will need to talk about the presumption against bail because of the issues that have been raised but clearly we do not want to see perpetrators out and going back and doing it all again. We do not want to see the extreme circumstances in which the victim or victims end up dead when it was known already that the perpetrator was a perpetrator and that they had been allowed by the system to go back out there and do it. I do not know if we can ever stop that happening entirely but we can have a jolly good try.

So there is the police family violence order, the court family violence order and there is the regime of mandatory reporting. We have had representations in particular on this from some of the service delivery organisations and I did talk to the minister last week about concerns that had been expressed to me. I acknowledge that, as a result, I think it is clause 38(3)(j) anyway there is a section of the draft bill that was altered as a result of that conversation.

I have, however, had further representations from service delivery groups who still are voicing concerns and I know you are aware of that, Minister, or imagine you are because you had a new bit inserted in your second reading speech in relation to making no apology for leaving the other bits in and saying that the victim need no longer be alone and the community was taking responsibility through the mandatory reporting measures.

I understand that that is your intent. I am simply saying that when the people working at the pointy end in this are still expressing concern, I feel we need to at least take on board that they are and try to hear them. What I got today was from the Domestic Violence Co-ordinating Committee who expressed their support for the Family Violence Bill and I will not go through everything they said to applaud it but there was a lot there obviously.

They said this bill is an active step the Domestic Violence Services have been seeking for many years. It is clear where they stand. At the same time they said:

'However, as a sector providing service to women escaping domestic violence, the Domestic Violence Co-ordinating Committee holds serious reservations regarding the impact on women should section 38 of the bill proceed unchanged. This section would make a range of health professionals including counsellers, family support workers and general practitioners mandatory reporters of family violence. Whilst there is some merit in having better records of the impact of the perpetrators' abuse and violence on victims the breach of privacy for women who may disclose to a trusted professional or who is then legally obliged to report abuse is concerning.'

They said:

'obviously workers currently contact the police if there are severe circumstances that need police involvement and work within a framework of duty of care.

We know that victims leave the relationships several times before leaving the relationship for good. What this could mean is if a victim takes the first brave step of disclosing and then is told that the police will have to be informed, she may not feel safe to disclose further information or seek further help and in fact as is the nature of the family violence will act to protect the perpetrator if she is not yet ready to leave the relationship.

The DVCC hold concerns about what protocols will be put in place by the police, currently it is unclear about how the police will respond to any mandatory notifications'.

Minster, I thought it important because this is from the people working really at the coalface to bring that forward and, if the worst comes to the worst it will become apparent fairly rapidly if people are being put off accessing the services that they desperately need because of the mandatory reporting requirements, so we really do need to have a good hard look at that.

One of the concerns we had expressed to us is that someone might talk in the course of their counselling about an abuse that happened a couple of years previously and then find that, although the perpetrator has actually been through change and the circumstance no longer obtained, because of this requirement nonetheless there would be police enforcement action taken.

So that is the sort of concern that we are getting and I wanted to particularly put that to you. We will go through some of the issues that have been raised in relation to the other clauses. I think it is important to put some of those on the record. The other thing I simply wanted to say in closing is that because of the groundbreaking nature of this legislation, because, Minister, you have already expressed that there will be a need to review and revise some of the provisions and that you are willing to come forward with amendments; because we do not want to see people opposing this legislation because they have difficulty with the way some of the provisions are framed, that we would therefore like it to be mandated in the legislation that there be a review, so that we can make sure that what this is meant to do, what it is doing, what it is not meant to do, and what it is not doing, because at the moment it is a matter of argument here about how some of these provisions will actually work in practice and we actually cannot know when it comes down to it.

So I will be moving an amendment and it will be for a review of the provisions of the act, including an investigation of the effectiveness of its mechanisms. That that review would need to be conducted by the minister and tabled in Parliament so everyone will know about it so that there will be a pressure for change if there are real problems found and that that happen within three years of the commencement of the act.

I see that as a positive contribution. I understand from discussions informally around the Chamber that the minister is inclined to accept that amendment and I think it may well help the passage of the legislation in another place. I hope that it is a contribution to doing so as well as a contribution to making sure that, if any of the concerns that have been expressed come to fruition, there is a reassurance that they are going to be identified and dealt with and we have got that reassurance there in the act.

I would like to again close by expressing my strong support for the initiative that has been taken here tonight.

Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER - Order. By agreement of the House, we are going to take a meal break now till approximately eight o'clock at which time the bells will ring.

Sitting suspended from 7.24 p.m. to 8.07 p.m.