Family violence & Commonwealth laws e-news | Issue 7

Issue 7 | 25 July 2011   View original format

We’re still here …

You haven’t heard from us for a while as we’ve had our heads down reading submissions and preparing the Discussion Paper.

This is just a quick heads-up to remind you that the Discussion Paper will be ready soon—in the first week of August. Of course, we will notify you via this e-news as soon as it is available, but would encourage people and organisations intending to make submissions to put aside time over August and September to prepare them. The closing date for submissions will be 21 September 2011—so that we can make our November reporting deadline. We were able to take many late submissions in response to the Issues Papers, and all have been considered for the DP, but we don’t have any more leeway that we can give in response to the DP. We appreciate the burden that writing submissions places on all our stakeholders but please be assured that your work helps us enormously in developing our thinking. You provide the evidence base upon which our law reform recommendations are ultimately founded. So please hang in there till we get to the end on this important work!

Consultation strategies—Indigenous, CALD and LGBTI communities, and people with disability

Meanwhile, we have been working on consultation strategies that will provide a basis upon which we can engage meaningfully with the Indigenous community, people from culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) communities and the lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and intersex (LGBTI) community as well as people with disability. The draft strategies have informed our consultations to date, but in order to encourage community feedback in relation to the strategies we expect to soon be in a position to set up small gatherings of community representatives with whom we can consult and get feedback in relation to each of the strategies. Beyond their use in this current Inquiry, we anticipate the strategies can be used as a template of sorts for all future Inquires to ensure early and meaningful consideration of the unique perspectives and needs of the Indigenous, CALD and LGBTI communities as well as people with disability.

SCAG

Last week President Rosalind Croucher attended the Standing Committee of Attorneys-General with Commissioner Terry Flew, having been invited to give the assembled attorneys and ministers an update on the ALRC’s approach for the National Classification Review (Terry Flew is the Commissioner in Charge of that inquiry). In relation to the ALRC’s work around Family Violence, it was very pleasing to note that one of the decisions coming from this meeting was that the Ministers agreed to develop a national response to the report on family violence that we delivered in November last year, Family Violence—A National Legal Response, undertaken as a joint project with the NSW Law Reform Commission.