Page 4502 - Week 14 - Thursday, 9 December 1993
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would be seen to be endorsing those recommendations by noting this report tonight. I expect that, for example, things such as artificial conception, surrogacy, dividing fences, disposal of uncollected goods, and things of that kind would come back to this Assembly for us to consider the appropriate course of action.
There is a significant issue of the application of imperial laws in the ACT. An earlier report of the ACT Law Reform Committee did refer to and tabulate the imperial laws still in force in the ACT, going back to 1267. There are quite a few of them - about 50 or so - and it is worth looking at page 76 of the report to see what they are. Some of them are quite well known. There is the law of 1297 entitled the Great Charter of the Liberties of England and the Liberties of the Forest confirmed by King Edward, the Great Charter, of course, being a reference to Magna Carta. The Bill of Rights of 1688 is also referred to. The mere fact that these laws are old does not of itself indicate that they are obsolete. For example, I am sure that members in this place would be very happy to know that the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833 remains on the statute books and still has force in the ACT. A person who was captured and sold into slavery in the ACT could, hopefully, rely on this law to protect them. Many of these other laws similarly have continuing relevance in the ACT.
I note that in the rest of the report it is made clear that there are very few of these imperial laws that are considered to be irrelevant to the ACT. In many cases it is suggested that the language of the laws should be updated, but not that the laws themselves are irrelevant or of no continuing relevance to the operation of the ACT. Possibly the statute of 1536 dealing with offences at sea might be of some marginal relevance to the ACT, but otherwise they are of some significance. Magna Carta, for example, continues to prevent imprisonment contrary to law, to require jury trials and to require that justice be given to all freemen, which I assume would now be interpreted to mean all free people. That is an important and significant piece of our legal history. The present Chief Justice, Mr Justice Miles, noted in 1987, in the case of the Queen v. Clarence Lindsay Hermes, Pinkerton, Borg and Dobson:
The so-called right to a speedy trial (which may be no more than one aspect of the right to a fair trial) may stem from Magna Carta (which survives in the Australian Capital Territory by virtue of S.6(1) of the Imperial Acts Application Ordinance 1986) ... Some of the criteria, possibly the only criteria, of a breach of the right to speedy trial are: the length of the delay, the reasons for it, the contribution to the delay occasioned by the defendant, and the prejudice suffered by the defendant by reason of such delay.
I, for one, am pleased to know that those sorts of principles are still alive and well in the ACT by virtue of those things.
I am being hurried up by the Minister for Health, who obviously has to go and resolve his health dispute. I think this initiative is a good one to examine where we are as far as law reform is concerned, and I look forward to the gradual bringing on for debate in this Assembly at an appropriate time of particular issues raised within this document.
Question resolved in the affirmative.
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