ACT DPP Victoria Engel SC has warned that a lack of funding for her office is undermining community safety and the administration of justice in Canberra. Photo: Supplied.
Director of Public Prosecutions Victoria Engel SC has loudly sounded the alarm over how a lack of “long-term, significant funding” is compromising the needs of people in the justice system, especially those who are vulnerable.
Ms Engel stated in Budget Estimates there had been “no meaningful increase to my budget” since the issue was raised in a 2017 external strategic review.
The Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions has a little over $21.1 million allocated in the 2025-26 Budget, up from $19.6 million the year before.
ACT Policing received a record amount of funding in previous years, and the court’s capacity has also increased, meaning more charges are able to be laid (through more police officers being on the streets) and the courts could schedule more hearings.
But Ms Engel said her office appeared to have been left out of the equation.
“The real-life effect is that my staff simply don’t have time to prepare these matters properly,” she said.
“[This] really compromises community safety … the work that my staff do, the commitment they show and skill they bring, contrasted with them being hamstrung due to untenable workloads to effectively prosecute matters, is the difference between a just outcome and an inadequate outcome that undermines justice and community safety.”
Ms Engel stated that in the last financial year, the Magistrate’s Court sat for an equivalent of about 540 extra days, and the Supreme Court had a 40 per cent increase in trial listings.
There had been 199 sexual assault files handed to the DPP office in 2023-24, rising to 249 files in the recent financial year.
The office had also received 935 fresh family violence prosecution matters and completed 788 family violence prosecutions.
“My staff have been expected to continue to absorb that work, whilst matters increase in their complexity and whilst victims and witnesses, rightly, expect more from my office,” Ms Engel wrote in her opening statement to estimates.
“Quite simply, we are asked to deliver the impossible, with a budget that has fallen significantly behind and has left us out of step with the service prosecuting agencies are able to provide in other states and territories.”
Ms Engel voiced similar concerns to Chief Minister Andrew Barr and Attorney-General Tara Cheyne earlier this year.
The DPP also wanted to see more funding for witness assistance officers.
Her office received $404,346 in emergency funding from the Confiscated Assets Fund to increase the number of officers from three to six in July 2024, but that funding will end in June 2026.
She said this amount was still too small, given there had been a 170 per cent increase in family violence matters and a 50 per cent increase in sexual assault matters compared to four years ago.
“DPPs across the country have caught up, except for the ACT,” Ms Engel said.
“At the moment, I am not able to provide witness assistance officers to the majority of victims coming into my office.”
She gave the example where one witness support officer had heard their client, who had been sexually assaulted in their own bed, could not afford to buy a new bed, which was adding to their trauma.
The officer was able to use community contacts to provide a new bed for her client free of charge.
“That’s the kind of real-world impact [this service has],” Ms Engel said.
A year ago, Ms Engel called for funding for at least 20 witness assistance officers, but she said now that was the “absolute minimum” needed.
“The gap and the need are clear.”
Attorney-General Tara Cheyne acknowledged some more consideration of the broader impacts of increasing court and police funding “would have been helpful”.
She stated the short time between receiving the Attorney-General portfolio and preparing the 2025-26 budget meant a lot of the current funding was for short-term initiatives and to plug gaps.
“We just had to look at what we could do to deal with the main pressures on our legal profession,” Ms Cheyne said.
“I absolutely accept the points that have been made, that there is a shortfall here, and we need to have a look at how we’re doing everything.”
Ms Cheyne said work would begin to understand the full scope of costs being borne by the DPP, but couldn’t give a timeline on when progress was expected.
“It’s an issue that I have inherited, and that multiple AGs before me have inherited as well.”
Opposition Leader Leanne Castley said it wasn’t good enough.
“These services don’t need another review, they don’t need responsibilities reshuffled – they need enough resources to do their jobs,” she said.
“This entire Budget process is exposing failure after failure after failure, where core services are not being funded. We call on this government to do that for the DPP, and to do it immediately.”
