Page 5961 - Week 18 - Wednesday, 11 December 1991
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things very difficult, because, in the absence of a reversal of the onus of proof on ownership of the property, you would have to prove that they were indeed ill-gotten gains, and that could often be difficult. So, the Scrutiny of Bills Committee is right in saying that there is a problem there, but I think it is a case where the Government and the Territory community are justified in reversing the onus of proof.
Mr Stefaniak indicated an area where he was differing with my proposed list of amendments in relation to the time that a warrant is valid for. I think that he is essentially right, but I might propose a different way of going about it. Essentially, the problem that the Scrutiny of Bills Committee identified was the inconsistency of using a month as the prescribed time for which a warrant was valid. The proposed amendment, I think, deletes "prescribed time" from the period of validity and locks into a 72-hour period of validity, which is based on the trigger mechanism, which is that you get a warrant if you believe that a person, within 72 hours, will have the appropriately tainted property.
Mr Stefaniak thought that that may be too restrictive, because a warrant should perhaps be on foot for longer than 72 hours. After thinking about it and talking with Mr Stefaniak, I tended to agree with him. I then went to the Commonwealth legislation, and the Commonwealth legislation has a statutory definition of "prescribed time", which is 48 hours unless an information is laid in respect of an offence, in which case it is a month. That appears in the definitions clause of the Commonwealth Act. Then I looked at our definitions clause which also, indeed, has that same provision; that it is 48 hours, or a month if an information has been issued. I think that is the problem, really. The inconsistency that the Scrutiny of Bills Committee was pointing to was the use of a month whereas we have used 28 days elsewhere.
So, I am foreshadowing another amendment, which I have circulated, which proposes to take out "1 month" and substitute "28 days". That would be consistent, then, with other legislation, and it does not tamper with the existing period of validity of warrants, which I think could have been too restrictive.
So, what I propose doing, in effect, is to not move my amendments Nos 3 and 5 and instead move this additional amendment to the definitions provision, which will pick up the Scrutiny of Bills Committee's concerns without having what, I think, could have been the unintended consequences, if we had gone through with my amendments Nos 3 and 5, of having it far too short, and perhaps also an unintended consequence of Mr Stefaniak's provision which could have made it too long a period of validity for the case of the warrant where an information has not been laid. Perhaps that is a case where the shorter 48-hour period now contained in the definitions provision should remain.
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