Page 4820 - Week 16 - Monday, 25 November 1991
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When we received these Bills I made some inquiries of the police and the prosecution branch in relation to the matters and I was advised that there is certainly no harm in Mr Collaery's Crimes (Amendment) Bill being accepted, because it will have the effect of ensuring, in all cases, that an interpreter is present when the police have to investigate a matter. A number of matters, unfortunately, have been thrown out of court simply because it has been shown, or suggested, that a defendant who had a reasonable command of the English language did not, for example, understand the caution. Whilst the questions were fairly simple and the answers simple, because the caution was a little bit more complex and was queried and apparently not understood, the whole case went out of court, and someone who probably should have been convicted was not.
The relevant prosecuting authorities see no problem with this Bill making it mandatory that an interpreter be present, because that ensures that the police investigation and the police record of interview and question and answer session are conducted entirely appropriately from the word go; and that saves a lot of problems later on. It is better to get it right to start with, rather than have problems later on.
Apart from the inherent fairness Mr Collaery is proposing - fairness from the civil libertarian aspect - at the other end of the spectrum, in terms of the pure administration of justice, in terms of even prosecutions, it will tend to make it a more effective system. So, we have no problems with these two Bills.
It would be nice if we had a national approach. I am pleased to see that the Attorney concedes that this really will not have any great effect in terms of any national approach; and if there have to be amendments when that happens, so be it. In the meantime this puts in legislative form what effectively, in most cases, has been the case in the ACT for a large number of years - certainly for about the last decade, as far as I am aware.
This legislation will not cause any harm. It certainly has been accepted as quite sensible legislation by both the Australian Federal Police Association and the DPP, with whom I spoke. I certainly take full regard of the learned opinions of persons as eminent as the current director, who is a queen's counsel and a very experienced man in the criminal law, mainly as a defence counsel but now also as a prosecutor, and of course the police themselves, when they say that they have no concerns with it. Accordingly, Mr Temporary Deputy Speaker, we have no problem in supporting this piece of legislation introduced by Mr Collaery.
MRS GRASSBY (3.45): Mr Temporary Deputy Speaker, in the time that I have been involved with many of the ethnic communities in Canberra I have not yet had anybody complain that the interpreter services of the courts were inadequate. However, I cannot be absolutely sure of that.
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