Page 2680 - Week 09 - Thursday, 25 August 1994
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LEGAL AFFAIRS - STANDING COMMITTEE
Report on Crimes (Amendment) Bill 1993
Debate resumed from 18 May 1993, on motion by Mr Humphries:
That the report be noted.
MR CONNOLLY (Attorney-General and Minister for Health) (11.24): This is the on-the-spot fines issue. In February 1993 Mr Moore introduced the Crimes (Amendment) Bill to provide for on-the-spot fines for a range of street offences. The Government indicated its support for the concept, as did the Opposition. It was referred to the Standing Committee on Legal Affairs, and Mr Humphries's committee conducted an inquiry, producing a report giving in-principle endorsement to the Bill but expressing reservations about cost, the kinds of offences that should be subject to on-the-spot fines, and the lack of standardisation in existing schemes. That inquiry proceeded in a comparatively short time.
Subsequent to that committee's report, I received quite extensive correspondence from the president of the ACT Law Society, Mr Clynes, and the Director of Public Prosecutions, Mr Crispin, QC, in which they both expressed very serious concerns of legal principle about the appropriateness of infringement notices for street offences. Those concerns are such as to have persuaded the Government that the Crimes (Amendment) Bill should not be looked at in isolation but would be more appropriately considered by the Community Law Reform Committee in its current inquiry on public assemblies and street offences.
I wrote to both Mr Moore and Mr Humphries, enclosing copies of those quite serious issues raised by Mr Crispin and Mr Clynes, and put the view that further action on the Bill should await that separate exercise. Mr Moore has indicated that he would prefer to proceed and Mr Humphries is considering his position. Therefore, the Government has decided that it is not appropriate to support Mr Moore's Crimes (Amendment) Bill at this time and that it is preferable to await the outcome of the Community Law Reform Committee's current inquiry into public assemblies and street offences. In the meantime, the department will continue to work with other agencies to ensure standardisation of existing infringement notice schemes in any future schemes.
This does raise an issue, which I am not sure that we formally had to consider before, where an Assembly committee goes off and does a reference and takes evidence and then reports; and after the report is received quite important or significant new issues are raised. It is unfortunate that Mr Crispin and Mr Clynes did not write their letters in time to get the letters to Mr Humphries's committee, because I think they would have had a significant impact on that committee. We do not really have a procedure for committees to go back and consider fresh evidence, and perhaps we would not want to do that. One could imagine that some committees would become quite interminable if that were the case. The Government is not trying to duck-shove this. It is genuinely saying that it still sees merit in the principle; that it read with interest the views of the committee, but then received quite substantial and in-principle arguments from both the Law Society and the DPP, which it has conveyed to both Mr Moore and Mr Humphries; and that at this stage it will not be supporting the Bill.
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