Page 455 - Week 02 - Thursday, 14 May 1992
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part of the AFP's equal opportunity program to try to get more officers who speak community languages - will get in contact with an interpreter service. That really is the best that you can require of the police officer.
There are little cards in a number of the more widespread community languages, the grouping of community languages that we are familiar with that we put on the back of how-to-vote cards at election time and that political parties think are the more widely spoken languages; but, again, we really cannot expect a police officer to be able to have a card to advise the person in every possible language, in every one of the 120 that Mrs Grassby tells me are the telephone interpreter service accessible languages.
All we can really do is require the police officer to have recourse to that telephone interpreter service; to get on the blower, which is what happens now in practice - we are going to make it a requirement of law - hopefully be able to get straight through and recognise the language and get an interpreter straightaway. In some cases they will have to go through what may be a process of the telephone interpreter service having to identify the dialect or language and find an interpreter.
This is a significant breakthrough in the law. It is a significant protection to Canberra citizens, dramatically different from the New South Wales protection, and I think it goes far enough. I think really that Mr Humphries's proposal is unnecessary, in that there is a protection, and potentially difficult, in that it is casting a statutory duty on the police officer to provide the information in a language that the person is able to understand. The arresting police officer at one o'clock in the morning at the charge counter over at Civic Police Station is not himself or herself necessarily able to do that. The best that we can require of a police officer is to get an interpreter service in as quickly as we can, and that is what we are attempting to do in relation to subparagraph 13(1)(c)(iii). In addition to that, the other guarantee is that the person can go to the phone and ring a friend.
Mr Humphries: If they understand what has been told to them.
MR CONNOLLY: In New South Wales you have only the right to ring a lawyer. We have the right that we try to get onto the interpreter service and the right of the person charged to use a phone to ring up anyone. The likelihood would be, in relation to the person speaking an obscure language or dialect and the interpreter service being unable to work out what it is, that they might be able to get onto the phone and get a friend or relative who has some English skills or is able to tap them into the interpreter service.
What we have here is really a leading edge in terms of citizens' rights in Australia - robust protection for the rights that Mr Humphries wants to guarantee and that we want to guarantee - and we say that they are adequately guaranteed by the law as proposed by the Government.
MR HUMPHRIES (11.49): The Minister might be wishing to guarantee rights, but I maintain that the rights are of no particular use unless they are in a form which is accessible by ordinary citizens. First of all, the Minister says that no other State does this particular thing, so why should we? Since when has the argument that no other State does a particular thing been an obstacle to what this Government does? Since when has that been the case? Are we afraid of trailblazing? Are we afraid to do something - - -
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