Page 2398 - Week 09 - Thursday, 17 September 1992
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Detail Stage
Bill, by leave, taken as a whole
MR HUMPHRIES (10.58): Madam Speaker, I move:
Page 5, subclause 7(1), line 19, omit "Penalty: $20,000 or imprisonment for 2 years, or both", substitute "Penalty: $10,000 or imprisonment for 1 year, or both".
I have mentioned the arguments in favour of this amendment, but may I clarify one thing. This is a provision which will be used, I suspect, mainly against members of the media. They are the ones most likely to have possession of those sorts of documents. They are the ones most likely to be caught having those sorts of documents more than once, in the sense of being repeat offenders. I am not suggesting that members of the media are going to be breaking the law willy-nilly, but if there are people caught on second or third offences, to which the maximum penalty would then at least be considered for application, those sorts of people will be the ones to be in that category. Bear in mind that the information that those sorts of people have in those circumstances is effectively useless. They cannot communicate it to somebody else. They cannot publish it in their newspaper. They cannot transmit it over their radio station or television station. They cannot use it in any court proceedings. The information is effectively useless.
It will often be the case that a journalist will be given a taped conversation, will have it in his possession, and will say to the person who has given it to him, "Look, thanks for nothing. It is very interesting and this would be titillating to run for my readers' or listeners' interest, but I cannot do it under the new privacy Act. Thanks, but I will just stick it away in this drawer". I think that to provide the same level of penalty for people in that situation as for those who, in effect, commit the real offence - the recording or the interception of that conversation - is to send the wrong signal. I think, Madam Speaker, that it would be appropriate for us to indicate in this Bill that we consider those two things at different levels of seriousness.
I also remind members that this provision, if it stands in the present form, will be used, unfortunately, by prosecutors as a lazy device to get around the fact that they cannot prove that a person has actually recorded a conversation. They will get them, instead, on possessing the conversation and will apply the same level of penalty. It is a bit of lazy law-making which allows the person charged with the offence to be effectively hit with an offence at the same level of seriousness as the offence which they would like to charge him with but cannot prove. That, I think, is an unfortunate tendency, and we should resist it.
MR MOORE (11.00): Madam Speaker, since we are debating the Bill as a whole, I will make some comments on the specific clause that Mr Humphries has mentioned, and then some more general comments about the Bill as a whole.
Mr Connolly: I did not mean to cut you off in the in-principle stage.
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