Page 3439 - Week 11 - Wednesday, 13 October 1993
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Detail Stage
Clauses 1 to 3, by leave, taken together, and agreed to.
Proposed new clause 3A
MR CONNOLLY (Attorney-General, Minister for Housing and Community Services and Minister for Urban Services) (3.48): Madam Speaker, I move:
Page 2, line 4, after clause 3 insert the following new clause:
Maintaining a sexual relationship with a young person
"3A. Section 92EA of the Principal Act is amended by omitting from subsection (8) 'subsection 443(3)' and substituting 'subsection 443(1)'.".
This corrects an error in the original Bill in relation to the numbering of the relevant clause. The Bill amends and re-enacts section 443 of the Act. The Government proposes that this new clause be inserted. It provides that the reference in subsection 92EA(8) of the Act to subsection 443(3) of the Act be changed so that it correctly refers to subsection 443(1) of the Act, which is the correct section when it is renumbered. I think, although I am not sure, that this may have been picked up by the Scrutiny of Bills Committee as a minor typographical error in references. Madam Speaker, I table at this point the explanatory memorandum for all of my amendments.
Proposed new clause agreed to.
Clause 4
MR HUMPHRIES (3.50): Madam Speaker, I move:
Page 4, line 11, proposed paragraph 429B(e), omit the paragraph.
The arguments were dealt with in the in-principle stage of the debate. I will refer to just a couple of issues. Mr Connolly makes a point about where a court is considering sentencing a particular offender who has committed a crime of a kind which is then prevalent. It may be that that is a particular problem. It seems to me that that problem might be addressed by amending proposed new section 429B(e) by saying, for example, that they may not take into account the prevalence of a crime at the time when a particular offender is sentenced. That would seem to deal with that problem. To leave that paragraph in as it now stands, it seems to me, is bound to generate some confusion.
I ask members to imagine that they are a team of three judges on a bench and they have seen a wave of crime of a particular category. They, as the people responsible for sentencing people who commit those crimes, are not deceived by any media bias or any claims by an opposition in parliament. They know that there is a particular problem with a particular kind of crime. They take the view that there should be a hardening of judicial policy in order to effect some change in the incidence of that crime. Are they not considering, when they come to that conclusion, both the question of prevalence and the question of sending a signal to potential offenders? They are surely doing both at the one time.
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