Page 1703 - Week 06 - Tuesday, 30 April 1991
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clearly inconsistent with a move towards more concern for victims of crime to have a provision in the Act which potentially could preclude a victim from going to the civil courts to sue on the facts which led to a criminal conviction. So, it is not only a pointless anomaly in the law; it is an anomaly that potentially is inconsistent with the whole thrust of a greater concern for victims of crime.
The Bill also amends section 552 of the Crimes Act, which is a provision which gives powers to magistrates to discharge juvenile first offenders. This Bill is a bit of a bits and pieces provision, I suppose, in some senses; but they are both minor problems which needed to be looked at. This is clearly one of the anomalies which occur over time when you have a parent Act such as the Crimes Act of New South Wales that is applied in the ACT and is amended in New South Wales over the years, but not here. Section 552 was an original provision in the Crimes Act and at the time, I suppose, it was an enlightened provision insofar as it allowed a magistrate to be somewhat more lenient to juvenile first offenders. Young offenders now, of course, are dealt with under the Children's Services Act 1986, and quite properly so. Therefore, the provision in the Crimes Act is redundant.
It is interesting to note that the equivalent New South Wales provision, section 552 of the New South Wales Act, was repealed in 1951, at the time that the first wave of laws relating specifically to juvenile justice were introduced. It was repealed when in 1951 the Children's Act was introduced in New South Wales to set up a special system of administration of justice to children. That was the logical thing to do.
You had the original provision in the Crimes Act; when you set up a specific piece of legislation to deal with juvenile crime you removed the equivalent provisions from the New South Wales Crimes Act. Yet, when in 1957 the Children's Welfare Ordinance, which started a process of a separate legal authority for dealing with juvenile crime, was established in the ACT, the opportunity was not taken to repeal section 552 of the Crimes Act - probably an oversight; yet something which has taken some time to correct. So, that is a sensible piece of tidying up which we support, and we again commend the Community Law Reform Committee for its efforts. As I said at the outset, it was a very short and sharp report which led to a short and sharp Bill.
It is worthy of note, of course, that in a very useful way - and I hope that this is repeated in future reports, as is the pattern with the Law Reform Commission - the report contains draft legislation prepared by the Legislative Counsel's office as an appendix. So, the process of actually implementing a report is greatly aided as the Government and the Assembly have the model legislation before them when they read the report. In this case, it was possible for the model legislation to be
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