Page 3639 - Week 12 - Wednesday, 20 October 1993
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Madam Speaker, the Government does not believe that the grounds are there. We believe that the legislation, as passed by this Assembly, was deliberately tougher than the New South Wales model. It deliberately directed the courts to always look at the likelihood of reoffending, and not just in very specific circumstances. While there certainly are anecdotal views in the police force that bail is too easily granted in the ACT - I suspect that you may find that anecdotal view in any police force anywhere in the world - I have not had brought to my attention situations where bail was so clearly granted without taking into account the likelihood of reoffending that we had the appropriate grounds to go to the Supreme Court. I certainly have instructed the police to keep monitoring that and, if we find an appropriate case, to go to the court and put clearly before the court the intention of this Assembly which was expressed in that in-principle debate in May 1992. So, Madam Speaker, the Government opposes the first amendment which attempts to alter that presumption.
Mr Humphries's second amendment goes to the issue of bail and domestic violence. Madam Speaker, this is an issue that the Assembly itself revisited last year on the basis of an amendment that the Government brought forward where an error or a hole in the original Bail Bill was identified. That was because the original Bail Bill made it clear that bail was to be automatically granted where the maximum penalty for an offence was imprisonment for less than six months. The reasons for that were plain and sensible. It received the unanimous support of the Assembly at the time. The reason for that was that for those more minor matters you could well have a situation where a person was held in remand for a longer period than the maximum penalty that a court could have imposed. The Assembly took the view that bail should be granted for those minor offences. It was pointed out, and I think Mr Humphries amongst others drew this to the Government's attention later - I think the same community advocates brought it to the Opposition's attention as brought it to the Government's attention - that some offences under the domestic violence laws carried a maximum penalty of less than six months.
So we had a situation where the Bail Act, in its original form, specifically excluded remand for breaches of domestic violence orders. That was clearly inappropriate because there may be situations under the Domestic Violence Act where, while the maximum period of imprisonment that eventually could be handed down by a court is less than six months, it may be very important that persons be held on remand, if only to demonstrate to them the seriousness of a domestic violence order breaches, and certainly to provide protection for the subject of the domestic violence order. We are all aware of a situation in the ACT a couple of years ago when a person who was charged with breach of a domestic violence order went on to commit a murder. That is something that obviously we need to protect against. The Assembly did that in its amendments to section 7 of the Act that were debated later in 1992, in fact in the December sittings in the closing days of this Assembly before last Christmas. Mr Humphries's amendment, though, goes further than that and it, in effect, creates preventative detention. It says that bail will not be granted where a person is charged with breaching a domestic violence order.
Mr Humphries: By a policeman.
MR CONNOLLY: By a police officer. That is a very significant move. That basically says that if you are charged with breach of a domestic violence order you shall be held in custody. You have not been found guilty of any offence, you have merely been charged, and you shall be held in custody.
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