Dr WOODRUFF (Franklin – Leader of the Greens) – Madam Speaker, I can say with great pleasure that I am happy to speak to this bill and support this bill on behalf of the Greens. The Greens have been advocating for expanding the court‑mandated diversion program to include alcohol-related offending since it was recommended by the Sentencing Advisory Council in 2016, that is eight years ago.
We have also been advocating for much longer, for funding for the program to increase the participant cap that exists currently. Both these policies have now been adopted, at least in part, by this Liberal government. It is very interesting for us to see that the government stands up and year after year politely calls our alternative budget ‘kooky’, then we watch them adopt our policies year on year, sometimes one year, two years, three years later. It is worth saying that perhaps the Liberal Party has some appetite for kookiness as well.
In good faith, I will begin the contribution by discussing the court‑mandated diversion programs. The Attorney-General’s second reading speech jumps straight from the introduction of the scheme in 2007 to the foreshadowing of this bill in 2017. There is a huge expanse of context in the 20 years between 2007 and 2017 that is useful for us to understand, as the context for the court‑mandated diversion program expansion, to include alcohol that is here as a bill before us today.
The scheme for court‑mandated drug diversions was initially administered by Anglicare in 2007. It did not operate then under a strict participant cap, but the program was notionally funded by the government of the day to provide a diversion for 120 clients.
In 2010, the program was taken away from Anglicare into the Department of Justice and a year later, in the 2011‑12 financial year, the program was capped, reduced to just 80 participants. The argument for that at the time was it would better enable participants to each receive the adequate attention and focus they needed.
A year later, a review was undertaken by the government – I believe they might have had an independent reviewer – but a review was taken that estimated there was twice as much demand for the court diversion program as there were places available. There were 80 available places; at least 160 is what the review recommended in 2012.
The introduction and continuing of a program cap has long been rationalised by the Liberals on the basis that the program has been funded through Commonwealth grants. However, in 2015 the funding was $1.2 million a year, and there was nothing and never has been anything stopping the State of Tasmania providing extra money into this program.
Going forward to 2017, the government increased funding to the court‑mandated diversion program to a $2.4 million package in the 2017‑18 budget. That was for a range of programs aimed at alternative sentencing measures. It was introduced at the same time as the government phased out suspended sentences. It is not clear, and never has been, exactly how much of that $2.4 million actually went to the court‑mandated diversion program itself.
This funding increased the cap for participants from 80 to 120 people, which is exactly the same participant cap as the program originally had, 10 years before this funding increase. This participant cap increase was the result of expanding the program to the Supreme Court. In real terms, it in the Magistrates Court.
It is now also worth referring to the 2012 review I mentioned before that found the demand for the program was around 160 participants. The real demand today, more than a decade later, would likely be a whole lot higher, and also higher in the context of the expansion of this program into the Supreme Court, not just the Magistrates Court.
In 2022-23, there were 78 drug treatment orders issued. Given that drug treatment orders usually take between 18 and 24 months to complete, this suggests to us that a program that is capped at 120 participants would likely be very highly subscribed. With all of that context in mind, we are concerned about the lack of an announcement of additional funding for this program from the minister. Without any additional funding accompanying this bill, it seems unlikely that it is going to be able to provide any material benefit.
Minister, with this in mind, can you please answer a number of questions? I might wait for the minister to finish speaking. Can you answer the question for us? Will there be specific funding in response to this bill? Will drug treatment orders and alcohol treatment orders be subject to the same universal program cap, or will they have separate program caps? What is the proposed cap or caps that will be in place subsequent to the passage of the bill?
The Greens’ strong view is that the capping of this program is a wasted opportunity. It is an incredibly effective program. It is so effective that in 2015 a Tasmanian government submission to a parliamentary Joint Committee on Law Enforcement inquiry said:
The government has claimed that this program is proven to be one of the few measures capable of breaking the drug-crime cycle. [TBC]
The last review of this court‑mandated diversion program in 2012 found it was so successful that even amongst those who do not successfully complete the program, recidivism still declines. That means that even people who breach their drug treatment order and are subsequently jailed are less likely to commit crimes in the future than if they had initially been given a custodial sentence. That is an incredibly important finding. At a time where people in the community are rightly very concerned about the level of people who have alcohol and drug dependency, the fact that this program has been so successful is critical.
The modelling that was used by the Sentencing Advisory Council in 2016 found that a drug and alcohol treatment order with a two-year review cost $26,000 per person per annum, but imprisonment carries a cost of $120,394 per entrant per year. Even factoring in people breaching the drug treatment orders, and even factoring in likely shorter custodial sentencing periods, there is hands‑down no doubt that this program will provide significant state savings to the state.
The program saves the Tasmanian budget money and it is more effective at reducing recidivism. Why would we not fund it to meet its full potential capacity? Since the inception of this program a decade‑and‑a‑half ago, the program is still capped at 120 participants – the same number as the initially funded participant data in 2007.
We should note that both the expansion of the court‑mandated diversion program to the Supreme Court and the inclusion of alcohol treatment orders that we are debating here today have come about as a result of a review into the phasing out of suspended sentencing. The court‑mandated diversion program itself has never been reviewed. The Greens believe that this program, which is undeniably providing significant benefit, has historically had, and continues to have, untapped potential for the community, for the budget and for behaving compassionately with people, and effectively for reducing drug and alcohol-related crimes. For that reason, we are proposing an amendment to introduce a statutory review of the court‑mandated alcohol and drug diversion program.
Ideally, we would like a review to commence immediately, but we recognise that it is desirable for a review to also look at alcohol and drug treatment orders that are in place. Given that drug treatment orders are usually for a period of 18-24 months, we felt that anything less than a two-year period after the commencement of this bill would not give enough time to properly evaluate completed alcohol treatment orders.
We have had discussions with the government, and their view is that three years would be a more appropriate time for a review, based on provisions that allow for drug treatment orders to be extended. On this basis, we have refined our amendment to three years.
I finish by thanking the advocacy groups in the community who have long fought for alcohol treatment orders. People who are at the front face of supporting and working with people with alcohol dependency, and women who work in family violence and sexual assault services and who work every day with women who suffer the effects of alcohol‑fuelled crimes, know that alcohol is a massive scourge in our community. They know that where there is stress, alcohol fuels that; it can bring out the worst in people. When people commit crimes, at the base of alcohol-related crime so often there is a need to deal with the emotions and the trauma which are the basis for the addiction and dependency a person has.
At the moment we have a system where people who commit crimes related to drug use can get treatment orders instead of going to jail, but we have nothing for people who have committed alcohol-related crimes, even though far more violent crimes and assaults are related to alcohol than they are to other drugs.
I thank Anglicare for being at the front face of this for decades. I thank the Alcohol Tobacco and Other Drugs Council and the Drug Education Network. Both those organisations work hard to educate people in the community about safe drug and alcohol use and how to deal with addiction dependency.
I thank the community legal centres who are working with people who have too often been sent to jail and are given a custodial sentence when what they need is to be on an alcohol treatment order.
I thank the Australian Lawyers Alliance in Tasmania and the Prisoners Legal Service, who stand up and work with people in our prison system and defend people who commit crimes related to alcohol and drug use.
We very much support this bill. We hope that the minister announces an appropriate amount of money that will go into this program, and importantly, that it will be, from day one, an uncapped program, because it saves us so much money and it is the right thing to do for society.
