Page 5620 - Week 17 - Thursday, 5 December 1991
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As to the policies or the principles behind this - I think those were the words that you used - I have to say, given the significant matter that would generate such an inquiry, that I cannot think of one event in recent years in the ACT that would trigger such an inquiry.
Mr Jensen: I can.
MR WOOD: If you can, I do not know whether you identified it. I did not hear it.
Mr Jensen: I mentioned it yesterday.
MR WOOD: Which one was that?
Mr Jensen: The National Aquarium.
MR WOOD: The National Aquarium. Well, that could have been one. If you want an inquiry, you may, during the course of that inquiry, want to look at books. At the outset of the inquiry you may not have that view, but you would not want to interrupt that inquiry - I think this is a response to Mr Kaine's question - and start again under a completely different provision and Act, if you suddenly discovered that you needed to have powers of search. I think that inquiries requiring this sort of measure would be few and far between.
Amendment agreed to.
MR MOORE (11.33): Mr Deputy Speaker, I apologise; I was distracted for a minute. Having passed that amendment to clause 151, that certainly improves clause 151. But the reality is that that now provides for two options. One is that somebody can agree to have their place searched. If that agreement is above board, it can be searched.
But, if they do not agree, the panel of one person - this one person that the Minister has appointed - can then go and grab a magistrate late at night and say, "Look, I have this great idea. I have found a terrible group of planning activists who are greenies". Can you imagine that the new magistrate we are talking about is Magistrate Stefaniak. He hears this and very, very carefully weighs whether a warrant is necessary or not necessary. The arguments presented to the new Magistrate Stefaniak - bearing no relationship necessarily to you, of course, Mr Deputy Speaker - are just so compelling that he can see no choice.
Of course, he is not presented with two sides of the argument. When a single person who is a panel appointed by the Minister decides that he wants to get in and get some information, he will present the arguments as best he can. A magistrate who has just been woken up at 2 o'clock to hear this important information is likely to get the impression that it is important.
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