 I'd like to thank Robert for the introduction and I'm not imagining a thousand people somewhere else watching this. I'm imagining a much smaller number. I'd like to acknowledge the traditional owners of the land with meaning on the number of people. Don't give me a title, I kind of got to do what I thought was a big thing. I left this page blank for a week because I couldn't think of a cool catchy title and this is what I came up with. The titles I came up with, apart from that, were things like, well they had the vibe of the thing in it. So I can't really use vibe in the title page. I don't know how to use the technology. How do I change the screen? You're still trying to say next? Next. I'm giving you a Jack's perspective on this. It's not the only Jack's perspective. Jack's is a broad portfolio and there are many people with different ideas and perspectives. So how do you tell people about Government Block? The approach a lot of people take is to write to ministers to come to the director, write to a director general, come to a community consultation. And people come in and they say, we have the best idea ever. Really, really. It's not a light bulb, it's a fluorescent light bulb. It is so good, it is awesome. If we're really lucky they'll say, and what's more it's so good and we believe in it so much we actually grafted the legislation forward. So we don't always give effect to those kinds of things straight away really this conversation is around why we don't do that, why we might not do that and to give you some of the perspectives that we have on things. So I guess I have to start off by saying we value the community's views and part of the reasons for that. Apart from the fact that there is value that you have good ideas that we don't have a monopoly on good ideas. There's some other reasons around the size of the ACT government that lead themselves to that. We no longer have an expert per issue. Certainly when I started in the public service last millennium we seem to have a much more depth and there would be so two of my areas were actually two different branches and there were people there who had spent their whole lives on a particular topic area. We just don't have that anymore so we're really spreading much thinner next. So one of the areas I'm in charge of is copyright which is why you're getting drawn pictures. So things to remember about the context is we are an island in the middle of New South Wales so things that New South Wales does impact on us. People go from living in New South Wales and work here or live here and get working in New South Wales so we try to be consistent, that's important. And really when I go to my minister or one of my ministers and I say there's this idea one of the first questions I get is what does New South Wales do? And quite often the second question is what does the Northern Territory of Tasmania do? And the reason we get that is the second question is there are the small jurisdictions so there are some things that we wouldn't do in the ACT because we don't have the population. New South Wales has some really excellent schemes and you kill for them but we don't have the population density to support those sorts of things. The other thing, I couldn't draw the whole of Australia but you could imagine it. We are an island but we are part of Australia, we recognise that. So that has a couple of implications. One is harmonised legislation. Australia has regular national meetings where legislative proposals will be considered and there are some things that really benefit from having the same laws across Australia. Some people would like the same laws across Australia for everything. I can't see it taking off while states have particular sectional interests. So anyway we certainly look at, we get on the bandwagon for harmonised legislation. Things like road rules, it makes sense that wherever you are driving in Australia you have the same rules apply to you. There are small exceptions on that though. We are also a territory subject to Commonwealth law. So territories are recognised in the Australian constitution but really the Australian constitution is an agreement between the federal government and the states really so it talks about states powers. We are actually, the territory is a creation of the Commonwealth so we are established by a Commonwealth Act and that sets out a lot of the laws, sets out a lot of the rules around how we operate. So for example because we are subordinate entity until 2011 our laws could actually be disallowed by an executive act of the federal government so they could say to the Governor-General no disallow that and that could work within a certain timeframe. Can't do it now. The other thing is because of the self-government act there are some things we can't do so we can't execute people. If we were going to go there we can't, I'm sorry. And we can't make euthanasia laws, things like that. Another way that the ACT is different from the states is that we only have two layers of government. So we've got the state powers and the local government powers rolled into one. So this can make things more complicated and really it kind of means that we're covering more ground than in other jurisdictions like local legislatures, like the New South Wales government doesn't do the things like look after the roads and things quite as much as we do so it just means we cover more. A while back there was a report called it's the Hawke Report, governing the city-state and really what it said, it looked at the way we operate and it said actually guys, it didn't quite say it in these terms but it said you're a mile wide and an inch thick and really what you're trying to do is a lot of things and when you try and do a lot of things and there's not a lot of you you don't really hit the mark as much. What you should do is work out what your priorities are and focus on that which makes good sense. The issue is I think that along with having priorities as a government we also need to meet the needs of the community and if you have a problem and you have the problem today if I say to you when you bring me your lightbulb no I'm sorry this isn't on my priority list that doesn't make you happy so what we need to do is work out a way to be responsive focus on our priorities and still hit as many marks as we can so when Robert said you can ask questions you can ask questions I did put a slide at the end that said ask questions but if I'm not making sense I'm sorry next if I'm not making sense talk to me it does happen I have teenagers I'm used to feedback this is a picture of the Westminster system a couple of things so your traditional Westminster system has two houses we're a unicameral system so the legislative assembly is the single house you would think that would make it easier to get legislation through but I don't think so so really in the time since self-government there has only been one single party majority government so I think it was three or four years I think it might have been three years so what that means is that there's a lot of negotiating to get any sort of legislation through because you need to have two parties agree to it usually so at the moment there is a Labor Greens government previously there have been independents who have held the balance of power and there have been minority governments okay Westminster system we have a cabinet process so ministers can't go off there are some things that the executive can do let's take a step back there are three parts of government there's the executive legislature and judiciary, thank you the judiciary of mine so I shouldn't have forgotten them okay really what it's about is about balance so the executive can take certain actions so there are things like making regulations which are subordinate laws but they can't make the big laws and the big decisions they can come to the legislative assembly through a cabinet process and put laws through that way but that has to get the agreement of the legislative assembly the reason that there's a separation of powers like a Westminster system is really about balance and it's about making sure that processes are followed and that not all the power rests in one place because of the Westminster system separation of powers judiciary has independence we have independent courts so there's independence around judgements it also ties in with independence of prosecutors so we get a lot of letters and a lot of feedback around particular court cases and things like that the legislature shouldn't be involved in that the legislature should set up the system but really to stop the legislature getting the power to actually say how its laws operate apart from in broad terms the judiciary judges makes judgments on that and says how it will operate so it's the balancing again and we really don't make laws for individuals we make them for the system as a whole okay, next so this gets, yes, good this gets into the balancing again you've come up with your light bulb it's beautiful, it's awesome and it's so inescapably right and you can't understand why I'm not immediately doing something to legislate it the issue is that rights affect other rights and this is kind of a well-done thing but there are very few things in life that are completely right one way so I was at a meeting last week and we were proposing something to a group of informed stakeholders they had a particular, it was around courts and they all knew about the area and we said we're looking at doing this and somebody actually said well, you know, that's obvious why don't you just do it, why are you even talking to us and the person next to us turned around and said because I think it's the wrong thing to do so it's, even in areas where the stakeholders know each other and know the areas there are divergent views and really it's our part as the public service to balance rights and to take views and to make an informed decision and really this is where the community is important because we don't have the lived experience of how things operate we don't have the lived experience of what it's like to go through systems but we do have a broader picture and we do have contacts with other parts of the community rights affecting other rights if you look at the Human Rights Act pretty much so there's really this there's two rights that you can't you can't change or detract from but all the rest you can and that's because there's a recognition that one person's rights will affect another person's rights and the Human Rights Act again is around balance the Human Rights Act is a decision making tool so it won't stop us from making a decision doing something that we need to do what it will do is make sure that where that decision will affect impact on particular rights personal rights we've gone through a good process and that's around evidence that's around balance that's around appropriateness and it's around doing the thing that's least restrictive so really what the Human Rights Act does is it helps us decide whether we really need to do something that we want to do and really that goes back to having an evidence base we really need an evidence base we don't do things because they're the right thing to do we do them because we have an evidence base because it's not clear what the right thing to do is and what that will come through is probably the best way to describe that is what's the problem will what we're proposing fix it how often does it happen how proportioned it is it are we using something that's quite large to solve quite a small problem will there be collateral damage, that sort of thing so really it's going through it's really going through good governance and good decision making processes I guess the other thing that is always we certainly always think about is decisions that we make around what to propose to the minister are going to have an impact on tax usually quite often are going to either impact the community or cost the community money and it's taxpayers money and we have to think about that so we get quite repeated calls for things that might cost a lot of money and really we're not going to go for a big solution straight up if there are alternatives we'll go through them and that might take time to get us an evidence base next please so this is one of these things it's not like the other really I just wanted to give you two examples to sort of demonstrate the real life application of this one of the best one of the best indicators of whether something will work in the ACT is whether it's already working in somewhere else this is not infallible one of the things we put in back in the early 2000s was a right to trial by judge alone and that came in because there was a perception that there were quite complicated cases around sort of finances like fraud where perhaps the jury wouldn't understand and it didn't happen in all the jurisdictions across Australia but certainly there was I think we adopted the South Australian model and that worked really well and it reduced the impact on meant that there weren't retrials where juries came up with basically couldn't decide and things like that what happened in the ACT to this system that had been operating quite successfully in South Australia forever was we went to a situation where in South Australia and in other jurisdictions there was between 10 and 20% of trials were going to judge alone in the ACT it was more than double that and what we were getting was a skewing of the way people used the courts because of that so we can't always predict what the effect of what we're doing will be even if we've got a live example in Australia where you think it should apply the other thing I wanted to other example I wanted to give you was around bail reform so this is another one where it was obvious what the problem was so we had a problem with bail what happened was people were coming to the Magistrates Court for a bail application getting knocked back, appealing to the Supreme Court getting bail and this was leading to the Supreme Court because people didn't want to go to the Magistrates Court because you've always got a rubbish result and people wanted to go to the Supreme Court so it looked like a disconnect between the Magistrates Court and the Supreme Court when we actually looked at it the solution was to make people have a second application at the Magistrates Court stage there were two applications at that as a right because previously you could only apply once the issue was that when you get arrested the first thing you want to do is get out of jail so people would straight away apply for bail but they wouldn't have all their information they wouldn't have a good case that it was almost a gut reaction by making them have a second application at the Magistrates Court stage the stage that they had previously been going to the Supreme Court the Magistrates Court got to decide on what the Supreme Court had previously been deciding on and there were a lot more bail applications being granted I think the reason I wanted to share that one with you is if somebody had said we've got too many bail appeals to the Supreme Court let's make people go to the Magistrates Court again I don't think that that doesn't seem intuitive but in fact it's worked really well and when you look at the numbers, it's been in for about two years three years and the numbers are looking really good and it's led to people applying for bail at the right time at the right place I guess there are only a couple of other things around the ACT about us being different special so one is we have a population profile we have a lot of younger people and that will have implications for some things the other thing that sometimes we don't think about and certainly we do think about in crime prevention space is indicators of poverty socioeconomic indicators in the ACT are quite masked so because of a policy way back you don't tend to get poor suburbs you tend to get suburbs with a variety of people across them and that makes it harder to do some things that in other jurisdictions have been easier where you've actually targeted particular areas and we have a lot of hidden disadvantage so that's really I think next that's really what I wanted to say I hope that's kind of given you an indication of why things are not always as obvious as they should be and that there are checks and balances through the system that something that I think might be a good idea or you might think might be a good idea we might not have enough of the picture to be able to make an assessment Thank you very much Julie While we've got it here does anyone have any questions of Julie? I did them Sorry Yeah Yeah And totally hear you Really what other jurisdictions do is a factor so that when we make a decision about going forward if no one else has done it at least we know that we're trailblazing and that our mistakes are our own Again it's about balancing what the political appetite is at a particular time and what resources we have to put into things but no I totally agree and we do do things that other jurisdictions don't do and we are looking at Scandinavian countries are really excellent around law reform and that sort of thing So yeah Is there any sort of connection with the New South Wales departments around similar work? We do, we probably So the question was do we liaise with New South Wales around proposals and initiatives because we're an island within New South Wales So the answer is that we do a bit of it we probably don't do as much as we could but we could always do more consultation on everything Certainly because New South Wales has been around a lot longer than the ACT it has a lot of really good programs and we're really not averse to stealing ideas sorry, borrowing using So certainly there's a big initiative we're working on at the moment that we've pretty much talked to New South Wales from day one and they're our kind of mentor or learned friend on that So yeah I was wondering if organisations if in their work they come across areas where they do think that there could be improvements in the law how would you advise them to go about just having those discussions with government and calling us about how we should do that So the question was any advice on if you find areas for improvement for law you can get that message through to government you can write to ministers you can write to directorates there's a time to talk website there's a whole lot of community consultations around so feel free to put stuff in through that if you write to directorates that's probably a useful way if it's something that's sort of more low-key and what we actually find is that it's the small things that make a big difference to people's lives so things that just aren't working right and it might just be something small that we could sort of pop into a bill or something like that so yeah right, talk to us ring us even I think there's another question coming back there No, I must be Yes there is When you're weighing the evidence is the financial It's a tricky question it kind of depends whether it's a proposal or an initiative that already has funding so that ties into budget proposals so later this year there'll be the ACT government will put up an invitation for people to make budget proposals and that sort of thing but it's not a proposal that has a budget implication certainly use the community consultation which Geoffrey will talk about sorry look it's really hard to tell we don't go for a Rolls Royce model of anything because we don't have the funding we really don't have the size to do that I don't it's always a consideration but it will actually probably depend on the particular case so sorry I can't be more helpful on that I don't believe so I think it's the Commonwealth has responsibility for Jarvis Bay and we I think we currently provide services but Geoffrey might have a better idea on that one sorry Geoffrey Rodley to push even this it's Jarvis Bay is a Commonwealth territory of which they flee the service to the ACT government to do or deliver some services so we deliver care and protection services the courts go down but if and registration driver's licenses stuff like that but place is done by a local government very unique situation which we bore you endless we'll we'll sell it to you if you're interested we don't know can anyone want to any other questions for Julie no yes I guess it's all about which perspective you have I'm really happy to hear that we're the Jam in the Donut for new supports thank you