Page 441 - Week 02 - Thursday, 14 May 1992
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amend it. I think any person, irrespective of how serious the crime that they are charged with might be, is entitled to enjoy the presumption that they are innocent until proven guilty and, therefore, I think that this provision ought to be allowed to stand.
Madam Speaker, I do have amendments which I am going to circulate. One is to clause 13 of the Bill. I will not talk about that now; I will come back to it later. There is a curious provision in clause 13, however, which I merely raise rather than suggest that it should be amended at this point. Subclause (4) says:
A police officer who charges a person may refrain from complying with subparagraph (1)(c)(ii),(iii) or (iv) if he or she believes on reasonable grounds that it is necessary to do so in order to prevent -
(a) the escape of an accomplice of the accused person; or
(b) the loss, destruction or falsification of evidence relating to the offence.
I can certainly understand why communicating, possibly, with a legal practitioner might result in some falsification or damaging of evidence or notification of an accomplice to maybe get away or something of that kind. I can equally understand why communicating with any person of the accused's choice - talking about subparagraph (1)(c)(iv) - might cause some concern.
I find it hard to understand why it should be thought that communicating with an interpreter, a competent interpreter, should lead to the possibility that a person might have his accomplice notified of his arrest and therefore facilitate his escape or the loss or destruction of evidence. It seems to assume that a competent interpreter would be a person likely to abet or aid the accused person. That seems to me to be a slight slur on our interpreter services in the ACT. But it may be that there are good reasons for that, and I will be happy to hear what the Attorney has to say about that matter when he rises in this place. Obviously, if a person says, "I have a friend who can interpret for us", that might be another matter; but I am suggesting here that there is no compulsion on the police officer concerned to actually grant a particular interpreter to that accused person. They have to find some interpreter, not necessarily that particular person who might be a friend or relation.
Clauses 22 and 23 state the circumstances under which a person might be granted bail in terms of the sorts of things that a court must take into account or a police officer must take into account when considering whether a person is entitled to bail. One might assume that, if there are conditions imposed here, or circumstances laid out in the legislation, that would be in some way restrictive and therefore enable the person to argue that no specific conditions have been satisfied preventing them from having bail.
I might say, though, that clauses 22 and 23 are quite comprehensive statements of circumstances under which a person might not be entitled to bail, the sorts of conditions that might have to be adverted to by a court or a police officer - the background or community ties of the person, the nature of his or her home environment, their employment, criminal record, circumstances of the offence, seriousness of the offence, nature of the offence, strength of the evidence against the person, or any other information relevant to the likelihood of the person absconding. Those are very wide circumstances and I do not think there is any
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