Page 452 - Week 02 - Thursday, 14 May 1992
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MR CONNOLLY (Attorney-General, Minister for Housing and Community Services and Minister for Urban Services) (11.36): Briefly, members, Mr Humphries raises clause 9 and says that there is a reverse presumption there, and he is right. Perhaps I should explain why that is there. That is the case of a person who has been convicted by a court, by a magistrate, and sentenced to a term of imprisonment, or in a Supreme Court convicted by a jury and sentenced to a term of imprisonment, and has an appeal. It is every person's right to appeal against a sentence of imprisonment. What we are saying there is this: "You have been convicted and sent to gaol. You are likely to stay in gaol till your appeal is heard. There must be exceptional circumstances for a person to overturn a conviction imposed by a court. We should not be having a presumption that when you are appealing against a conviction you should be entitled to bail".
We are talking there about a very different class of person. We are talking about a person who has been convicted of an offence and is seeking bail in relation to an appeal, as opposed to a person who is being charged with an offence which it is alleged they committed while out on bail. They are in a very different situation from the person who has been convicted by a relevant court. Mr Humphries is right in saying that what we are arguing against appears in clause 9. But we would say that that is a very different set of circumstances; that is talking about a person who has been convicted by a court, and it is appropriate there to have a reverse presumption.
Amendments negatived.
Clause agreed to.
Clauses 6 to 12, by leave, taken together, and agreed to.
Clause 13
MR HUMPHRIES (11.38): I move:
Page 6, line 18, paragraph (1)(c), after "informed", insert "in a language that the person is likely to be able to understand,".
Clause 13, as I have explained already, talks about the sorts of things that a police officer must advise an accused person of when that person is sitting in a cell after having been charged with an offence, or possibly even before that point. Certainly they have to be informed about that matter when they are in police custody, and those matters are quite explicit. Again, this is probably a statement of the law which does not exist; it has not existed before now. It talks about informing a person that he or she may apply for bail, communicate with a legal practitioner, have recourse to the services of a competent interpreter, and communicate with any other person, presumably a member of the family or someone like that who might be able to provide some assistance to them.
It is interesting to note that these series of rights are for a person who happens to be sitting in a gaol cell. It seems to me that telling somebody in English that they are entitled to the services of a competent interpreter is a little bit of a right that you could do without. It is quite clear that that person has the right to be informed that they have access to an interpreter, but the Bill does not actually say that they do have a right to an interpreter. It says that they have the right to be told, in some language, that they have recourse to the services of a competent interpreter.
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