Page 3150 - Week 11 - Wednesday, 11 September 1991
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MAGISTRATES COURT (AMENDMENT) BILL (NO. 2) 1991
[COGNATE BILL:
CRIMES (AMENDMENT) BILL (NO. 2) 1991]
MR COLLAERY (10.47): I present the Magistrates Court (Amendment) Bill (No. 2) 1991. I move:
That this Bill be agreed to in principle.
Mr Speaker, as you correctly observed, the house was taken by some surprise by events, and I am grateful to the Clerk and the attendants for being able to respond so quickly to a confusing situation. I seek to reduce the time spent by making only one speech to these two cognate Bills. That was the arrangement that I indicated to the Deputy Clerk, and I believe that it is more convenient in private members' time to do that.
MR SPEAKER: Order! Mr Collaery, you must have the leave of the Assembly to have a cognate debate.
Leave granted.
MR COLLAERY: I thank members. In providing an entitlement in certain circumstances to an interpreter, the Crimes (Amendment) Bill and the Magistrates Court (Amendment) Bill, together, emphasise the principle of equality before the law. Article 26 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which Australia adheres, states:
... All persons are equal before the law and are entitled without any discrimination to the equal protection of the law.
These Bills break new ground in the ACT, in the formal legal sense, by giving domestic recognition to our international treaty obligations. In the procedural sense, whilst these Bills may strengthen existing practice in police investigative procedures and court practice, they will guarantee natural justice to persons in custody potentially disadvantaged by a poor knowledge of or skills in the English language. The Bills extend further protection to those disadvantaged in an exclusive monolingual legal system by reason of an inadequate knowledge of English or a physical or intellectual speech difficulty.
It is also appropriate to consider the historic plight of many Aboriginals brought before our courts throughout this country without proper English language assistance. Their plight epitomises the elitism of our legal language. It illustrates all that is wrong in a system which fails to recognise that true comprehension and thus equality before
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