Page 3128 - Week 10 - Wednesday, 15 September 1993
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
Mr Cornwell: A young person around a bus station would get off for nothing.
MR HUMPHRIES: I think they might. I am relieved to discover, Madam Speaker, that this provision reflects common-law provisions that allow any citizen to apprehend a person who is escaping from lawful custody. So we need not ask ourselves that threshold question before we decide to assist our trusty police man or woman when they are dealing with an escaping criminal. Madam Speaker, this legislation, as I said, is an important way of providing for a comprehensive system of dealing with prisoners and their welfare under the court system. I think that our system will be better served by legislation such as this. I commend it to the house.
MS SZUTY (4.12): I also would like to comment briefly on this Bill. Mr Humphries spoke at length about what the Bill does not do. It might be useful to remind members of what it does do. It is a Bill for an Act to provide for the interstate transfer of prisoners in accordance with a national legislative scheme. That point, I think, is a very important one. As members would have noted by the language that is used in the Bill, it is rather archaic and quite difficult to understand in some places in particular, perhaps a little more so than legislation that we would normally see here in the ACT. This appears to be due to the need for uniformity in legislation across jurisdictions on this particular subject.
A good example of the difficulty in understanding particular language in the Bill is subclause 31(3), which refers to the execution of a warrant "according to its tenor". I assume that "according to its tenor" means according to the terms and conditions contained in the warrant, and that is correct. The advice from Mr Connolly's officers on this matter was that the same term is used in corresponding provisions of the legislation of other States. For that reason we have a similar provision in our Bill.
There are other clauses of the Bill which I would like to comment on. When I was involved with the briefing from Mr Connolly's officers I asked what the timeframe for the changes to other States' legislation would be, following the passage of the legislation here in the ACT. I was assured that that would not be a problem because parliamentary counsel from all jurisdictions around Australia have been preparing for these changes and that various States and the Northern Territory will have their amendments ready to go in their particular Acts once the legislation has passed this Assembly.
I was particularly interested in clauses 9 and 19 in the Bill. The question I asked was, "What is the practice in other jurisdictions with respect to notifying people of the reasons for the Minister's decision either to agree or not to agree to an interstate transfer, as the case may be?". On checking, Mr Connolly's departmental officers said that the Commonwealth and New South Wales Attorney-Generals' departments advise that there is no requirement to inform prisoners of the reasons for decisions made about transfers. Questions about whether a jurisdiction should accept the transfer of a prisoner are regarded as matters for each jurisdiction to determine, as they involve the allocation of resources within each jurisdiction. They are not matters for other jurisdictions or the courts to canvass. The legislation therefore simply provides for each jurisdiction to tell the others whether they will or will not accept a transfer.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .