At the invitation of Bega MP Andrew Constance, Mr Hazzard attended Friday’s sitting of Moruya Local Court and afterward met  Magistrate Doug Dick, police prosecutor and court staff.

Mr Hazzard was pleased to get out of the city and “have a look and learn”.

“There are some different challenges that come about because of distances between centres, but also because rural areas generally have less options for magistrates to refer offenders to,” Mr Hazzard said.

“It’s a challenge.

“The other issue that Andrew had raised with me, which I heard about today from the court, was that we need to make sure there’s more use of audiovisual links between the various courthouses to cut down the movement of offenders and alleged offenders.

“It’s an enormous waste of resources and would be better used putting the money into the programs that we need.”

Mr Hazzard has only been in the job for 10 weeks following the state government’s Cabinet reshuffle in May, and said the visit was to learn about issues outside the city and apply them more broadly.

“One of the challenges for an Attorney General is to get the legal system working for the entire state of NSW,” Mr Hazzard said.

“It cannot be, as Andrew keeps reminding me, city-centric. It cannot be Sydney-centric. So I’m listening, learning and hopefully going to apply the lessons to policy discussions that I have, but also to allocate more sensibly the funds to get better outcomes for the community.”

Mr Constance was keen to see better collaboration between the Family and Community Services department and the judicial system.

“We need to ensure the decisions made within Family and Community Services are more preventative in nature, in terms of particularly targeting young people who are at risk, and at the same time giving the judiciary greater scope and capacity to refer children and young people to the right diversionary programs,” Mr Constance said.

“I think that’s one big challenge which, forever and a day, we have not seen the two systems talking particularly well together. Public policy makers can set the best policies in the world, it’s how it works out practically within local communities.”

Mr Constance said the priority locally was ensuring services were geared toward the individual as opposed to being “block-funded program style services”.

He said following the recent budget allocation of $500 million to child protection, the government would build greater capacity in the Family and Community Services system.

“We just need to make sure that we tailor-make our support to assist individuals at a local level,” he said