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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, First Session (54-1)
2019-02-27 Daily Xml
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Forensic Psychiatrists

Mr COWDREY (Colton) (14:30): My question is to the Attorney-General. Can the Attorney please inform the house on work to alleviate pressures on forensic psychiatrists in our court system?

The Hon. V.A. CHAPMAN (Bragg—Deputy Premier, Attorney-General) (14:30): I thank the member for Colton for the question. Whilst I was quite happy to make a ministerial statement on this yesterday, I will proceed in question time to respond. The government recognises the importance of protecting the community from predators and will take all available steps to ensure that South Australians remain safe.

Members would be aware that we have two pieces of legislation to deal with serious offenders. Firstly, we have the Criminal Law (High Risk Offenders) Act 2015 and, secondly, the Sentencing Act 2017. Both of these acts do two things. One is they enable us, with the support of two legally qualified medical practitioners, to apply to keep people in continued detention. Secondly, if an offender wants to seek a release on licence, then they need again two legally qualified medical practitioners to do that.

Consistent with the legislation that we changed last year to tighten thresholds for access to the right to have this release, they need to be able to satisfy, with the support of two medical practitioners, that there is a capacity for them to be both willing to control and capable of controlling their sexual instincts. We have reversed the onus. The law has been tightened. It still requires two legally qualified medical practitioners.

Members would be aware—there has been media coverage of this—that there is only a small pool of psychiatrists who specialise in criminal matters who are qualified to undertake forensic assessments. Members may not be fully aware that this issue in relation to there being a small pool of psychiatrists, and therefore sometimes delays in court proceedings as a result of this small pool being in existence and the work being distributed under the direction of the forensic mental health service in South Australia, in fact wasn't a new issue that came as news to the now opposition.

Why? Because in March 2017, nearly two years ago, the then minister for health received advice from the Law Society in writing of the urgency that needed to be given to addressing this shortage. Who was the minister for health at the time? The Leader of the Opposition.

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. V.A. CHAPMAN: The plaintive pleas of the Law Society to address this issue fell on deaf ears. Obviously, no-one was prepared to take responsibility on that side to actually deal with this issue. When the—

Mr Malinauskas interjecting:

The SPEAKER: The leader will cease interjecting.

The Hon. V.A. CHAPMAN: When the legacy of the failings of the former government, who swept this issue under the rug—

The Hon. D.G. Pisoni interjecting:

The SPEAKER: The Minister for Industry is called to order.

The Hon. V.A. CHAPMAN: —were ultimately unearthed by this government, the solutions were developed expeditiously. So late last year we met with members of the forensic mental health service, representatives of the courts, the legal profession and members such as the Legal Services Commission, who are of course responsible for dealing with a number of these issues. There needed to be prompt attention approving a number of measures to streamline psychiatric court assessment processes to be able to deal with these direct, immediate shortages.

We all know that experienced forensic psychiatrists don't just fall out of the sky and that they don't get trained up in five minutes. We need to address that. One of those suggestions by the director of forensic mental health was to look at introducing consultant psychologists who are not legally qualified medical practitioners under the act. We are acting on that and we will continue to act on these matters, notwithstanding the previous abandonment of responsibility by the previous government.

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