Justice Portfolio

The Hon. T.T. NGO (15:16): My question is to the Attorney-General. Can the minister update the chamber about new initiatives this year in the justice portfolio?

The Hon. K.J. MAHER (Minister for Aboriginal Affairs, Attorney-General, Minister for Industrial Relations and Public Sector) (15:16): I thank the honourable member for his question. I would be most pleased to outline a few highlights over the past 12 months of initiatives in the justice portfolio.

We are developing an Aboriginal justice agreement, which came off the back of the work that was undertaken in relation to the report of the Advisory Commission's Incarceration Rates of Aboriginal Peoples in South Australia. That is almost three-quarters of a million dollars to develop this program. We have continued to fund the Legal Services Commission, develop and implement a public campaign on coercive control, and we worked with Aboriginal Community Controlled Organisations and multicultural organisations to deliver targeted legal education on this as well.

We are investing $4.6 million over four years to secure and fit-out a new Port Augusta Community Corrections Centre. In an incredibly exciting development, a new suite of programs—which I mentioned in this place yesterday, so I won't go over them again—invests in excess of $11 million into Aboriginal community-led initiatives known as Yalakiana Tappa, which will include support programs, supported housing programs, and residential drug and alcohol treatment programs.

As I mentioned yesterday also, we have established a two-year trial of the Youth Aboriginal Community Court in Adelaide. Importantly, in the equal opportunity space, Equal Opportunity SA launched the WE'RE EQUAL campaign following a successful pilot last year. Nearly 700 people and 40 businesses have registered in this initiative, and there was a 51 per cent increase in activity across the Equal Opportunity SA's website. This is just a brief snapshot of some of the highlights of what has occurred in the broader justice area this year, and we look forward to building on that over the course of the next year.