Page 5049 - Week 16 - Wednesday, 27 November 1991
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The other aspect of Mr Collaery's Bill is fraught with more difficulty because what he is proposing to do is to make conduct that is lawful in the ACT unlawful depending on the criminal law of another State. His original proposal was extraordinarily broad-ranging in that it would have made it an offence to aid and abet in the ACT the commission of a criminal offence in another State. We had some very fundamental problems with that because, in particular, in a context that is close to the Labor Party's consciousness, in New South Wales Nick Greiner has introduced industrial legislation that we find abhorrent.
There is a potential for activities that we say are perfectly lawful and appropriate organising activities or agitating activities of a trade union activist to be unlawful. We would have been horrified at the proposal of a trade unionist's engaging in lawful political activity in the ACT being made a criminal offence because it was aiding and abetting what would be unlawful across the border.
I am pleased that Mr Collaery has retreated from that broad position of making it an offence in the ACT to aid and abet an offence in another State. We all must bear in mind that it is perfectly competent for a State in Australia to make conduct in another State unlawful if it has a sufficient nexus with the home State. States do have the power to legislate for what lawyers call extra-territorial effects. So, it is within the competence of any sovereign State to control what occurs outside its borders if it is impacting adversely within its territory. The problem we have is that Mr Collaery is reversing that and saying that what is criminal in the ACT, what is within the law or outside of the law under ACT law, will depend on the vagaries of what is criminal or not criminal in every other jurisdiction in Australia.
As I say, he has pulled right back from that extraordinarily broad proposal and is coming up with a much more limited proposal in his circulated but not yet moved amendment, to simply provide that it will be an offence in the ACT to transmit an article or substance to a person in another State or Territory if you know - he does say "knowingly" - that that article or substance is illegal in the other State or Territory. It is made a fairly substantial offence, with a two-year imprisonment. Again, the difficulty we have with that in principle is that what is or is not criminal conduct in the ACT should be provided by ACT law.
Mr Humphries: I think he has fixed this with these amendments.
MR CONNOLLY: No, I do not think he has, Mr Humphries. He is still providing in principle that the lawfulness or otherwise of your conduct here depends upon the state of the criminal law in another jurisdiction. We think that in principle that is inappropriate. If another State, for
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