View the recording of this speech here.
Record of Proceedings, 6 March 2024
Legal Affairs and Safety Committee Report, Motion to Take Note
I am personally offended by the member for Caloundra’s comments that members of the LNP do not care about victims of crime and use them only as political tools. I absolutely reject that. I tried to have this victims of crime inquiry extended in this House, because it was too short. We heard the member for Toohey lamenting the fact that the media did not give it enough coverage. The reason they did not give it enough coverage was that it was compressed into six weeks. People did not have time to find out about it, collect their thoughts as a community of victims of crime and make meaningful contributions to it—although there were some very good submissions. That is why the media was not covering it; it was too short.
When we consider that the mental health inquiry went for six months—which is a good length of time—that is exactly the type of time frame this inquiry should have been given, but it was not. I tried to move a motion in this place to extend the time frame, but members of the government voted against it. For some reason, they were determined to squeeze this inquiry into six weeks—which was nowhere near long enough to do a proper job—and it became a total missed opportunity. They wanted to rush this through.
Compare that to how they drag their feet all the time when it comes to reforming youth justice laws. There are a lot of victims of crime when it comes to youth justice. Members of the government were dragged kicking and screaming at the end of 2022 and early 2023 to change the breach of bail laws which we had been calling for for years. We still have closed courts when it comes to youth justice. We have been calling for that to be changed. We also have been calling for the principle of detention as the last resort to be changed. The government drags its feet on that. They act quickly at times when it suits their political agenda but not at other times when victims of crime, especially in the youth justice space, are crying out for change.
There were some good recommendations in this report, but too many were merely recommendations for more reviews and recommendations that had already been made by other inquiries. That is because there was not enough time to put together more recommendations on a more fulsome basis and for the community to really be a part of this inquiry over an extended period of time. I think they know the time was too short because I have now heard, I think, three members of the government talk about the time that was given, the number of submitters—or potential submitters—they emailed and the lengths they went to to try and raise awareness about this. We do not normally hear that from members of the government when it comes to these sorts of things, but they are this time. I think they protest a little bit too much because they know that they squibbed it and that this was a total missed opportunity.
A bill came out of this inquiry to change the monetary limits under the Victims of Crime Assistance Act. That is a good thing because those limits had not been changed for quite some time. It was good to see that happen. It was also good to see an Interim Victims’ Commissioner appointed. We support that. I think I have heard there is going to be a permanent Victims’ Commissioner put in place in the near future as well. As the member for Currumbin pointed out, there were other ideas that have not been taken up, and we do not know whether or not they will be. They relate especially to the idea of having a permanent victims’ advocate service set up so that there is representation at a public level and public funding for victims’ representation through the criminal justice system. This is one of those ideas that came up in the inquiry, but, because there was not enough time, there was not the ability to fully consider it either in the public space or in the committee domain and formulate a recommendation.
The inquiry should have been for six months. I tried to change it. Members of the LNP and the crossbench supported me in that, but for whatever reason—probably political reasons because this government is only ever motivated by political reasons and its own political survival—the government allowed only six weeks. It was too short. That is why most of the recommendations are actually recommendations from other reviews or just recommendations for further reviews, which is what this inquiry should have been about in the first place.