Page 2400 - Week 09 - Thursday, 17 September 1992
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what would they have gained from a Residents Rally strategy for that particular election that everybody did not know anyway? It was an interesting experience. That was reiterated again and again in the early days of this Assembly, and I gather that other members have had such experiences.
There is a serious side to this Bill, of course. We have seen situations where listening devices have been used entirely inappropriately. I congratulate the Attorney-General for bringing in this very sensible Bill. It will be made so much more sensible by this very minor amendment that Mr Humphries has moved.
MR CONNOLLY (Attorney-General, Minister for Housing and Community Services and Minister for Urban Services) (11.06): I thank Mr Moore for his support in principle. I apologise for having jumped after Ms Ellis finished in the in-principle stage. I was not aware that anyone else wished to get the call.
Madam Speaker, the Government will not be supporting the amendment. As I indicated, we have modelled this Bill pretty much on the New South Wales Act, and the same penalty provision has been seen to work there, without any particular problem, for some eight years now. While I accept Mr Moore's point that one ought not always to follow interstate provisions, I think the fact that it has not caused problems would indicate that the potential maximum of two years' imprisonment there is not inappropriate for the nature of the offence.
Mr Humphries seems to suggest that this is a provision that would mostly be used for the poor journalist who happens to have the documents in his drawer. I would say that it would probably be more likely to be used for the private inquiry agent who has employed somebody to do the actual dirty work of making the tap and to produce the document, and it is in the filing cabinet. If you look at the poor journalist, you might think that two years' imprisonment would be inappropriate, and I am sure that a court would think the same thing. But, if you are directing legislation to prevent the evil of people out there doing this sort of thing commercially, I would suggest that having a potential maximum penalty of two years' imprisonment is appropriate. People who are trying to make a profession of eavesdropping, who are using somebody else to do the dirty work to get the result, to get the product to use for whatever purpose they want to use it for in their private inquiry business, should, I think, be subject to a quite severe sanction. So I am not convinced that a two-year potential penalty for this section is inappropriate or that there is any necessary distinction to be drawn between this provision and others.
Mr Humphries or Mr Moore suggested that this is perhaps lazy law-making that is designed to pick up on other offences. I would say to the contrary. It is setting up a battery of provisions to prevent this agreed evil of people using eavesdropping devices on private conversations, and to catch it both at the level of the person who is out there using the technical equipment to do the bugging and at the level of the person who is going to profit from that or traffic in that. The possession of the intelligence should be treated as seriously as the person who does the preliminary harvest, so to speak, to get the information and the person who does the ultimate marketing of the information.
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