Ms O’CONNOR (Hobart) – Mr President, I rise to strongly support this legislation, the Sentencing Amendment (Alcohol Treatment Orders) Bill of 2024. This is a reform that has been a long time coming. As mentioned by the member for Nelson, this has been called for by the Tasmania Law Reform Institute, the Sentencing Advisory Council, Alcohol, Tobacco and other Drugs Council, and community legal centres – because it absolutely makes sense.
The Greens have been joining those calls since at least 2016. We are very pleased to see the government move alcohol dependency, treatment programs and diversionary programs for people who have committed certain crimes to be diverted from jail through, what sounded to me like a quite robust structure with the magistrate, community corrections, and the person participating in the diversionary program. These can take up to 18 months to two years for people to go through. I thought members might be interested in some of the statistics that have come through in the in some of the reviews about the drug treatment orders.
It is such an effective program. In 2015, in a Tasmanian government submission to a parliamentary joint committee on law enforcement inquiry, the government claimed this program is proven to be one of the few measures capable of breaking the drug‑crime cycle. The program was last reviewed in 2012 and it was found to be so successful that, even amongst those who did not successfully complete the program, recidivism declines. This means that even people who breach their drug treatment order for whatever reason – people are frail and vulnerable and fail from time‑to‑time – and are subsequently incarcerated, they are less likely to commit crimes in the future than if they had initially been given a custodial sentence.
Not that we should apply this as a primary lens to public policy, but looking at the costs to put someone on a drug treatment program – in the future, a drug and alcohol diversionary program – or put them into the correctional system, the Sentencing Advisory Council in 2016 found that a drug and alcohol treatment order with a two-year review costs $26,000 per entrant per annum, while imprisonment carries a cost of $121,394 per annum. It costs the Tasmanian people almost $100,000 more a year, when someone is incarcerated than when they are put on an alcohol or drug treatment program.
When the member for Murchison was talking about the op shops and bottle shops and the kids take on life in Wynyard, I was reminded of a time when my children were small and I had fled to Rainbow Beach in Queensland where my mother was, because I just had my fourth child and thought I really needed some help. There was a wonderful school up there, Rainbow Beach Primary School. It was very hot in Rainbow Beach. People were thirsty, and they were thirsty early in the day. They were pretty thirsty by about 11 a.m. So, when the school had special events like athletics days or the school presentation day at the end of the year, where all the bright, beautiful kids being recognised and rewarded, some parents would come along with eskys full of cans of Bundy rum, or beer. I had been living here for a very long time before we went back to Queensland and I remember being utterly shocked.
Then I saw how trauma is inflicted on a child. An example was this beautiful girl who won the class ‘Clever Person’ prize. She would have been eight or nine years old. She came running up to her dad, who was sitting near us there with his esky full of Bundy rum, and said, ‘Dad, Dad – look what I won’. He was so – pardon me, he was pissed. He was so drunk that he said, ‘Oh, that is great, that is really good’, and just sort of flicked her off. That moment in that little girl’s life will stick with her.
In my inaugural speech, I avoided talking too much about my personal family history, but this is a different kind of debate. I understand what it is like to live with alcoholics. My father was a journalist, and was very damaged by reporting on the war in Vietnam. He had a very serious alcohol problem. It made life at home quite scary sometimes. It was a volatile place and as the oldest child of three, I had to look after my siblings when mum and dad went to the pub on Stradbroke Island, on Christmas Eve, for example, and got drunk, came back, had a fight, and went to sleep. They are both dead now so me saying this is neither here nor there, but it has stuck with me.
I woke up first on Christmas morning, as I always did. There were no presents. I remember as the oldest child thinking, ‘Oh, they are going to wake up soon’. I ran up the stairs to wake up my parents, my bleary-eyed mother who also developed an alcohol problem over her life, and said, ‘Mum, Santa hasn’t come’. That is the story of so many children’s lives, where alcohol is a daily feature of your life. It definitely shaped me. I learned how to stand up to an angry drunk very early. The consequences for me, of course, have been that I am damaged. I clocked 8 out of 10 on a childhood trauma test about three years ago. I do not hold that against my parents, because they helped me to be brave and to be responsible. I had to be, to look after my brother and sister. Thank you, honourable members, for listening to that story.
We had a very good briefing this morning from the department and also the minister’s office and I think all the questions were answered to the satisfaction of members. I thought the member for Murchison made an excellent contribution. Alcoholism.
Ms O’CONNOR (Hobart) – Mr President, before the lunch break, I told a personal story, but I was also ruminating on what a pernicious drug alcohol is and how damaging it is to the lives of everyone who is affected by alcohol dependence.
In finalising my contribution on this good bill there is a question mark over – and this was asked by other members and I think the member for Murchison – whether or not there will be extra funding allocated to ensure the expansion of court drug diversion programs to alcohol at some point is funded to ensure the expansion works because the services are funded that need to respond to the person on the order.
There is still a funding question, because it is a false economy to not properly fund drug and alcohol diversions. It is a false economy financially and socially.
Every year, the Greens put a lot of work into producing an alternative budget. It is a really thorough and rigorous document, fully costed. Not everyone will agree with its content. But it is a document that government ministers regularly grab after it has been tabled in the House of Assembly. While they might stand on their feet and say it is kooky – we used to get that from the former premier, Mr Gutwein quite often. ‘Oh, this kooky Greens alternative budget’, well, in our kooky budgets going back many years now, we have provided funding to expand drug diversion programs to include people who have an alcohol dependence.
Ms Forrest – You just wanted to get ‘kooky’ on the Hansard here and there?
Ms O’CONNOR – That is right. It is quite a choice word we should throw in wherever we can. It is possible that the Liberal party themselves have an appetite for kookiness from time to time.
Mrs Hiscutt – I really must object to that.
Ms O’CONNOR – To reiterate some of the issues raised by Dr Woodruff in the Assembly, we noticed that, in the second reading speech, history is sort of collapsed between the introduction of the scheme and the foreshadowing of the bill we are debating today. The scheme was introduced in 2007 and a decade later this was foreshadowed, but there is a lot of context in that decade that is quite useful for us to understand today.
The scheme was initially administered by Anglicare and did not operate under a strict participant cap. The program was initially funded for 120 participants statewide, as it is today. In 2010, the Court Mandated Diversion Program was taken over by the Department of Justice and in the following financial year was capped at 80 participants. It was capped at 80 participants more than 10 years ago.
During 2012, there was a review that estimated there was twice as much demand for the program as there were places available. It is interesting, because when you think about there only being 120 funded places available and some of the hardship, the addiction, the mental health issues in all of our communities, it is hard to believe there are only, at any one time, 120 people who would benefit from a court-mandated drug or alcohol diversion program.
It is worth noting the introduction and maintenance of a program cap has been rationalised based on the fact the program was funded through Commonwealth grants. It is also worth noting in 2015 the funding was $1.2 million a year. In the context of the state budget, it is not a very large sum of money given the benefit. The state certainly has a capacity to contribute more and I look forward to seeing what the results of the review are. We should be putting more money into that system before the three-year review period is up, because it is a false economy not to.
If we jump forward to 2017, the government increased funding to this program, doubling it. In the 2017‑18 budget there was a $2.4 million package for a range of programs which were looking at alternative sentencing measures.
There has been a really interesting tension within government where, on the one hand, you had progressive, excellent attorney-generals who understood the critical importance of breaking the cycle. If we look at Liberal attorney-generals, I would absolutely put the late Vanessa Goodwin into that category because Dr Goodwin absolutely understood people. She was a great empath, she understood.that people’s background, their family, their economic circumstances have an enormous impact on their life’s choices and their life’s trajectory.
On the one hand, you had Dr Goodwin and the sort of semi‑progressives in the Liberal cabinet understanding that you need to look at crime and sentencing options thoughtfully. On the other, you had this ridiculous tough‑on‑crime rhetoric which we hear from ministers like Mr Ellis during the election campaign, which gets us nowhere. That sort of language gets us nowhere.
Of this $2.4 million that went into alternative sentencing measures, we are not sure how much actually ended up in the court‑mandated diversion program. I am sure there was an uplift because the funding increased the cap back up to 120 places. This is the same participant cap as the program originally had 20 years ago when there were about 150,000 fewer people living in lutruwita. The participant cap increase was a result of expanding the program to the Supreme Court and it does not really do anything to deal with the unmet need that we know is in the Magistrates Court.
If we look back at the 2012 review, it found that demand for the program was around 160 participants, well over the cap, a demand that would be likely much higher now more than a decade later and also in the context of the expansion into the Supreme Court. This is a slight diversion, but any member who has had a look at the most recent Supreme Court annual report will understand that we need to have a discussion about court reform to make the court fairer and faster. It is a big discussion to have. Justice that is dripped out slowly because of a lack of resources, insufficient staff, or processes that are no longer fit for purpose, is justice not well served for people who are caught in that system. I hope that is a conversation that we can have as a Council before too long.
In 2022‑23, there were 78 drug treatment orders issued. They usually take 18 to 24 months to complete, which would suggest that the 120-bed capped program is often highly subscribed. I know that these questions were raised in the other place, but it is worth members hearing the answers.
Is there any plan to have any specific extra funding allocated in response to this bill? I believe the answer at this stage is no, but we would like to hear what future planning there may be. Will drug treatment orders and alcohol treatment orders be subject to the same universal program cap or will they have separate program caps? Is there any consideration being given to uncapping this program so that if a person, who the magistrate believes would benefit being on a treatment plan – and usually they do, rather than going to jail – it is arguably unjust that a person would not be able to access that program because the 120‑person cap had been reached?
There could be a regionally inequitable situation where, because it is oversubscribed in the north-west and the caps there are maxed out, but in the south there is a bit more flex in the system, someone in the north-west cannot access that program. That leads to great unfairness, simply because of a resourcing issue. It is not a justice issue, it is a money issue. True justice should never come down to the dollars. We think that the capping of the program is a false economy, and a wasted opportunity.
I talked to members before about the relativities of putting someone on a program or sending them to Risdon Prison, and there are massive savings.
In closing, I want to acknowledge that the Greens in the Assembly strengthened this bill and made it more workable, but also gave us an opportunity three years from now to examine how it is working in practice. The review clause requires the minister to commission a person who, in the opinion of the minister, is suitably qualified to undertake an independent review of the court-mandated diversion program no later than the day three years after the day on which this bill we are debating commenced. We very much look forward to seeing the results of that review and know and believe it will show it is a successful program. The review will be looking at barriers to eligible participants. It will be examining caps on program participants, the level of government funding and the availability of treatment services, which remains a live and outstanding question.
We are very glad to support this amendment bill. It is a really important reform. It will change lives, and ultimately, surely that is what we are all about.
