Page 3790 - Week 13 - Wednesday, 16 October 1991
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Our community, through this Assembly, has been denied the right to classify films and thus any opportunity to find a compromise through an additional X category. The Commonwealth can now face the prospect of Federal police officers supporting State criminal laws by launching actions in this Territory. We commend this legislation to the house.
Debate (on motion by Mr Connolly) adjourned.
CRIMES (AMENDMENT) BILL (NO. 5) 1991
MR COLLAERY (11.29): Mr Speaker, I present the Crimes (Amendment) Bill (No. 5) 1991. I move:
That this Bill be agreed to in principle.
I have long been concerned about police fingerprinting and photographing. In July 1979, I defended a well-known Canberra unionist who was fingerprinted, photographed and detained overnight because he had the temerity to argue with a taxi driver who had become lost about an extra 35c on the meter. My client was ultimately compensated.
It was my habit thereafter, as defence counsel, to ask all of my clients, particularly those charged with exceeding a prescribed concentration of alcohol, whether they had been fingerprinted and photographed. In the early years, they invariably were, despite the fact that they carried identification and many were well-known citizens. This situation began to improve at about the time I left practice in 1989. However, I pursued this issue as Attorney-General and ultimately requested the Australian Federal Police, on 16 January of this year, to revise their general instruction No. 27.
I expressed the view that persons were having their fingerprints recorded by police as a result of procedures set forth in the general instruction. I informed the police that I was disturbed that these persons were having their fingerprints included in a national automated fingerprint identification system - the acronym is NAFIS. I informed the police that the general instruction No. 27 implied that fingerprinting was a routine procedure and that the instruction, rather than section 353A subsection (3) of the Crimes Act 1900, governed the procedure.
I also pointed out to the police that the general instruction did not distinguish clearly enough between Commonwealth and Territory offences. Since that time, the Federal Government has introduced its own Federal Crimes (Investigation) Bill. That debate, of course, is taking its own course and I will make no further comment.
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