Page 2860 - Week 09 - Tuesday, 11 October 2022
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initiatives. In some cases we brought in those initiatives ourselves. There is a body of work. There is a body of work before Assembly committees. That is always going to be the case with any government.
But there is more that can be done. We support Operation Toric; we support a bunch of that law reform. That is not the debate here. It is not an either/or. It is a question of: would a review by an independent judge or panel of judges, as we described this morning, assist, enhance and allow us to put our hand on our heart and say, “Yes, we are doing everything that we can to stop this trauma happening in our community”? Those parents cannot understand why this government refuses to do that.
What this government seems to think is: “No, no; we have got it right. We have got it sorted. We have got the plan. Everything is fine.” Those parents and our police know that everything is not fine. They have interacted in the most horrific way with our legal system, in a way that none of us would ever wish to imagine. They are telling us this. And the minister, the Attorney-General and the Chief Minister are ignoring their calls.
The police are at these events every day. They are the ones at these traumatic events every day and they are saying to us that more needs to be done. They are not saying, “Rip up the system.” They are not saying, as Mr Rattenbury asserted, that no-one should ever get bail. No-one is saying that. What they are saying is that more can be done. It is a reasonable, proportional request from people who have interacted in the most terrible way with our justice system and, in the case of the police, do so every day.
Many of the bodies of work that are being done at the moment are somewhat limited in scope. They do not address the issue that the police and parents are calling for. I would be very happy to work with the Attorney-General to work out, with victims’ groups and with the AFPA, what shape it should be, but I would envisage perhaps a panel of judges—one from the ACT, one from Victoria and one from New South Wales. This is not about trying to get some hanging judge into the system. Mr Rattenbury shakes his head and laughs. He thinks it is funny. It is an option for judges to look at how a system works.
Is it the case, members, that judges are reticent to send alleged offenders to the AMC because they do not want to mix remandees with sentenced prisoners? Is that affecting judgements? That is a question. Certainly, I recall a statement from Justice Refshauge to that effect after an incident. Are there sufficient diversionary programs available? How many offenders have committed serious offences on bail? What is the nature of those offences? Are sentences in line with community standards? Are they consistent with other jurisdictions? Have they changed over time? How could the answers to those questions do anything but assist in making improvements to our justice system? Those are just a limited number of questions, a snapshot.
This is not just, as I said—and it is very clear—something that the Canberra Liberals have made up. We have been saying this for a decade. We have been hearing from victims and from police for a decade. I will read from the latest Australian Federal Police Association statement. I remember talking with their former president, Jon Hunt-Sharman, a decade ago about what he called the revolving door of bail. The AFPA said:
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