Page 1051 - Week 04 - Wednesday, 20 March 1991
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to provide that the penalty unit shall be $110 rather than $100. As years go past that may move to $120, $130 and $150, and, no doubt, in several years' time, $200 or what have you.
The advantage that this offers is that one amendment to the Interpretation Act on a two- or three-yearly basis will update and provide realistic penalties for all Acts that are expressed in penalty units. I would think it would be appropriate, if the Assembly passes this Bill, for us to follow the process that has been followed in States that have adopted this course; that is, when amendments to the criminal law are contemplated or when any general housekeeping amendments are made to Acts, the Assembly would take the opportunity to translate the penalty provisions in those Acts, as they come up, into penalty units.
I obviously would not expect that this Government - nor would Labor in government - would accord a terribly high priority to immediately rushing in and fixing up all the Acts on the ACT statute book; there are other more pressing needs. But over a period of time, some years, we would get to the position where most, if not all, statutes in force in this Territory were expressed in penalty units. This process of regularly updating the one statute, the Interpretation Act, will have the effect of keeping penalties realistic. That goal of keeping penalties realistic is obviously a desirable objective and one that members on both sides of the house would agree to.
As I said, we have here done this by way of an amendment to the Interpretation Act. We believe that that is the appropriate place to put this provision, although it would be possible, I suppose, to have had a freestanding Act called a Penalty Unit Act which provided for this. I think it is appropriate to place it in the Interpretation Act. It is placed immediately behind section 33 of the Interpretation Act - lawyers in the house would be familiar with this section - which is the provision that says that, where a monetary penalty is provided at the foot of a section, the court may impose any penalty up to and including that.
That is sometimes confusing to people in this house or outside this house. They will look at a provision introduced by a Minister and they will see "Penalty $1,000". This was a criticism that I heard uttered in relation to the Weapons Bill, where penalties were expressed at, say, $1,000 or $5,000. People were saying that it was unjust. An example would be given of a comparatively trifling or inadvertent breach of the law and it would be put, "It is unjust to have a $5,000 penalty". But, of course, anyone who is familiar with the operation of the criminal law would know that it does not mean that for any breach of that section the court will automatically impose a $5,000 penalty. It has that discretion. As that is the section that the courts look to to interpret how you
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