Page 2401 - Week 08 - Thursday, 5 August 2021
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video
MR HANSON (Murrumbidgee) (3.31): I move:
That this bill be agreed to in principle.
Let me start today with a quote:
I would like to raise my concern as the shadow minister for police about the difficult job our police force have to do. They are the ones who have to enforce the law. They are the ones who have to go out there and do the hard graft to keep us safe. They feel enormous frustration—I know this from anecdotal conversations with our police—with this government and the revolving door of bail. They do the hard work, they arrest the criminals, they put them before the courts and they get flicked out again on bail—repeatedly—and then they find them again committing a crime.
Those words are ones that I uttered in this place nearly a decade ago during a debate on bail. That motion in 2012 from the opposition called on the government at the time, this Labor government, to report on the number of people who were remanded in custody and subsequently acquitted, granted bail and failed to comply with their bail conditions, and granted bail and committed further offences whilst on bail.
I also called on the government to show how it was going to protect the public from those who further reoffended whilst on bail. From that date until this, this government has not been able to answer those questions. They are perfectly reasonable questions and any government should know. For years we have been asking. Through motions in this place, estimates committee hearings and Assembly committee inquiries, we have been asking the government over and again to address this issue. Over and again we have been told that it cannot be done, that it is too difficult and that the system is not ready yet. It is not good enough that this government cannot tell us who has committed offences whilst on bail or the nature of those offences. An Assembly committee was established and looked at bail laws in the ACT. The committee recommended:
… that the ACT Government conduct a review of arrangements for bail in the ACT and introduce in the Legislative Assembly legislative amendments to the Bail Act 1992 which, if passed, would introduce a focus on risk management, with reasonable and proportionate bail conditions.
Recommendation 43 of that inquiry called for a review into bail laws and the government did not agree to conduct that review. This was, to say the least, frustrating. As we said at the time, this is not a knee-jerk reaction in terms of one incident. This is not political point scoring. I hate to think that we will be back in this place in six months or six years time, whenever it may be, doing something following a tragic incident when some crime has been committed by someone on bail that could have been prevented. If that is the case, then we can well reflect on today and see what action we took as an Assembly to keep the people of the ACT safe. That is what I said years ago and here we are, years later, as predicted. We should reflect on the failure of this place to act on that day.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video