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House of Assembly - Fifty-First Parliament, Third Session (51-3)
2009-09-09 Daily Xml
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STATUTES AMENDMENT (RECIDIVIST YOUNG OFFENDERS AND YOUTH PAROLE BOARD) BILL

Second Reading

Second reading debate resumed.

Ms CHAPMAN (Bragg) (22:57): The letter continues, as follows:

No formal official record is kept of an informal caution. If a police officer formally cautions a youth, the officer must ask the victim whether he or she wants to be informed of the identity of the offender and how the offence is being dealt with and, if the victim indicates he or wishes that information, give the victim that information (see s8(9) YOA). The police must give the Youth Justice Coordinator certain information including the name and address of the victim of the offence. The Youth Justice Coordinator, who coordinates family conferences, must ask the victim whether he or she wishes to be informed of the identity of the offender and how the offence has been dealt with, and if the victim indicates he or she wishes that informal, give that information (see s12(11) YOA).

S13(1) YOA imposes limitations on publicity for any report of any action or proceedings taken against a youth by a police officer or family conference.

Mr Speaker, I wonder if I may have your attention—

The SPEAKER: Order! If members wish to discuss matters, take it out of the chamber. The Attorney-General has a point of order.

The Hon. M.J. ATKINSON: My point of order is that the member is now reading provisions of the bill, and the provisions of the bill are readily available to all members. They are on the file.

The SPEAKER: Order! I was going to ask the member for Bragg whether she was just reading the bill, but I think she is quoting from a letter.

Ms CHAPMAN: I am very disappointed that the Attorney as not been listening attentively as I started to read. This is a letter from Mr Michael O'Connell, the Commissioner for Victims' Rights, to Ann Bressington MLC, whose member of staff had raised this issue in the briefing. This is entirely the correspondence from the victim, someone whom the Attorney, in presenting this bill, had been clear, through his staff, to advise me had been consulted on the bill and, as I indicated at the beginning of this letter, he had received that information from the minister. The letter continues:

Section 13(1) of the YOA imposes limitation on publicity of any report of any action or proceeding taken against a youth by a police officer or family conference. This applies to victims' and offenders' information. Section 13(2), however, provides that a person employed or engaged in the administration of the YOA must not divulge information about a youth against whom any action or proceeding has been taken, informal or formal caution or family conference, except in the course of his or her official functions, which I argue should include honouring the Declaration of Victims' Rights. Declaration creates statutory obligations or, if it does not, it should be amended to ensure that is understood.

Section 63C of the YOA imposes limitations on the publication or broadcasting of certain information about young offenders, but there is no equivalent to the aforesaid section 13(2). Section 64 of the YOA of the provides:

'If a youth is proceeded against or dealt with under this act for an alleged offence, a person who has suffered injury, loss or damage in consequence of the circumstances alleged to constitute the offence is entitled, on application in writing to the Commissioner of Police, to be informed of the name and address of that youth.'

Furthermore, those provisions do not prevent the disclosure of the names of young offenders by, for instance, the police to me as Commissioner.

In his second reading speech on amendments to the Victims of Crime Act 2001, including the declaration, the Attorney-General (the Hon. Michael Atkinson MP) made it clear that the intention of the government's amendments (which became operative on 17 July 2008) included to make it clear that the declaration extends beyond the criminal justice system to all public officials and public agencies that help victims of crime. In other words, to make it clear that the obligations created by the declaration apply to officials employed by the Department for Families and Communities, the Department of Health, and so on.

Thus, when read together, the declaration gives victims rights to information about offenders and prisoners, and the YOA gives victims certain rights to information about young offenders, in particular. In my opinion, there should not be any inconsistencies. Victims are entitled to have their perceived safety concerns taken into account by a bail authority. Victims are entitled to know the outcomes of cautions, family conferences and court hearings. Victims are entitled to know young offenders' names and home addresses on application.

It does not seem right the distinction is made when young offenders are in custody and seek release on parole. If those offenders were adults their victims would be entitled to considerable information and entitled to make submissions pre release and to the Parole Board. A victim who registers on the proposed youth offender victim register should be entitled to similar information to that afforded victims of the adult offender victim register, as well as victims registered on the mentally competent offender victim register.

In summary I would prefer victims' informational rights were stronger rather than constrained by the Statutes Amendment (Recidivist Young Offenders and Youth Parole Board) Bill 2009. With this in mind I have examined the amendments that you propose. I support your proposal to amend section 41A by inserting, after subsection (4), subsection (4a) that should require the responsible public official—

The Hon. M.J. ATKINSON: I have a point of order. My understanding of second reading is that it goes to the principle of the bill, not to a detailed consideration of the clauses. That is for the committee stage.

The SPEAKER: There is no point of order.

Ms CHAPMAN: The letter continues:

This is consistent with the obligation to tell the victim who has safety concerns, the conditions imposed by a bail authority to protect that victim. It is also consistent with the proven demand that victims in general want to be kept informed. For example, in one survey in our state, eight in 10 victims said they wanted to be kept informed.

Likewise, I support your proposed amendment to section 64 that would provide for the release of certain information to the victim about the respective young offender. Your amendment complements the existing informational rights as per the Declaration Governing Treatment of Victims of Crime but also clarifies that the age of the offender should not constrain or otherwise limit those rights. Public officials should be obliged to take reasonable steps to ensure victims get the information they want.

Victims should not be bystanders in the youth criminal justice system. Parliament created laws that extend rights to victims of crime. It is wrong to promise victims' rights with one hand and with the other to seek to take those rights away.

Those who chose to participate should be afforded respect and treated with dignity. Knowing what may happen, ahead of time, then knowing what happened, can often reduce anxiety and help the victim get through the process of healing more comfortably.

Might I conclude by pointing out that victims want equal justice. To attain that justice does not necessarily require us to strip offenders of fundamental rights. It does require a balanced approach, respectful of victims and offenders as human beings.

Yours sincerely,

Michael O'Connell

Commissioner for Victims' Rights.

Probably most people in this house would agree that brevity is not the strong point of the Commissioner for Victims' Rights. However, he very clearly outlines two things that are important. One is that, with respect to victims of offences, whether the offender is a child or an adult, it should be indiscriminate: it should be across the board. The second thing is—

The Hon. P.F. CONLON: Mr Speaker, standing order 128 means you have to stop.

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. P.F. CONLON: On a point of order, having read to us at some length the letter from the Commissioner for Victims' Rights, it is not necessary, for the well educated people here, to paraphrase him and explain what he said. If there is a clearer example of tedious repetition than that, I have not seen it. We all heard the letter. We do not need it reinterpreted. It was written in English.

Mr Hanna interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order! Yes; it is not necessary for the member for Bragg to paraphrase the correspondence that she has just read out in full.

Ms CHAPMAN: Having confirmed that the Commissioner for Victims' Rights had received the bill and the second reading from the Attorney-General, and there being no detail in this letter about what his view is on the substantive bill—none is in there—obviously, he has addressed in a rather longwinded way, some might say, his view on the anticipated amendments of Ms Bressington. Ms Bressington was not necessarily asking for that.

I ask the Attorney-General to ensure that this information comes to the house, because clearly he has this information: we were told that at the briefing. However, nowhere have we seen any response from him on the substantive bill. We need to know whether he has a view. Clearly, he has a view on the amendments. Has the Attorney-General received any response from those who are alleged to have been consulted? That is a question that I think the Attorney-General needs to answer because, clearly, this important stakeholder has a view on these other issues, and we need to know—

The Hon. P.F. CONLON: Mr Speaker, I rise on a point of order: standing order 128. Ms Chapman has now said three times that he has a point of view on those amendments and nothing on this, and it is a question that needs to be answered. She does not need to say it three times. We do speak English on this side.

The SPEAKER: Order! The member for Bragg is engaging in repetition. The member for Bragg.

Ms CHAPMAN: The other matter that has been raised, this time by the government during the course of the briefing, is the question of clarifying what I understand to be two things. I will have a look at the amendments handed to us by the government, but my understanding from the briefing, so that this is on the record, is that the government wants to achieve under this process an assurance that, if a nonparole period is imposed, it is equivalent to the nonparole period relating to the offence which has the longest penalty. So, if there are multiple offences there are different amounts, and this mandatory nonparole period is to be the amount that is calculated on the longest one.

The second area that is apparently intended to be tidied up is that there would be some fair assessment or taking into account—I am not quite sure how this operates and I will look at it in detail—of the time spent by the offender, I presume in custody, in the pre-sentence period. I am not sure why that does not apply at the moment, but the youth act apparently does not cover that. In any event, on the face of it, they seem to be reasonable things to be tidied up, and the opposition will be happy to look at those provisions. With that brief contribution, I indicate that we oppose that aspect in the bill relating to recidivist offender badging, and we will otherwise support the balance.

Debate adjourned on motion of Hon. P.F. Conlon.

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