51
project work, Commissioners expended 10% of this time on advisory
work. Advisory work included contributions to Cabinet papers on sex
offences, Customs legislation and adoption.
Sentencing Council support
The Sentencing Council was not set up before the election. Until the
election the Sentencing Establishment Unit continued to do some work
to prepare supporting material for draft guidelines so they would be
ready to handover to the Council when established.
After the election the new government signalled that it didn’t wish
to proceed with the Council and no appointments were made.
Some resources continued to be devoted to the work until the end of
February to enable work to be concluded and available for future use if
required. The Commission received reimbursement of $0.223m for the
work in the financial year in review.
Outcome performance implementation of reports
A significant measure of the quality of the Commission’s work remains
the extent to which government accepts our recommendations for law
reform and takes steps to implement them. In taking this approach,
we note that legislative enactment is only one measure of our
effectiveness, as not all our projects are undertaken to alter legislation
and in some cases it is not always possible to determine the degree to
which recommendations have been taken up. Judgments can differ on
how to characterise the achievement. Recommendations for legislative
reform in particular may not be actioned because of higher government
priorities, lack of parliamentary time and lack of resources within
government to implement proposed reforms. While some reports focus
on the administration of the statute book others have the updating,
re-presenting and reprinting of a statute as the desired outcome.
We have developed a methodology using a rolling five year cycle,
to track the acceptance of our report recommendations over time.
The methodology identifies the number of reports published in the last
five years and categorises them as having been fully or substantially
accepted, partially accepted or not accepted. This approach does not lend
itself to a formulaic approach and each report is considered on its merits
to determine its correct categorisation. The rolling cycle is consistent
with the Commission’s annual work programme which has new projects
added each year as current projects are completed. The first rolling five
year period commenced 1 July 2005 and finishes 30 June 2010.