Page 3814 - Week 13 - Tuesday, 8 November 1994
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My concern about this matter is not that the safeguard has been put in place. I think it is important, with respect to these areas, to have laws which are clear and which contain safeguards on their operation. It is, however, important also to make sure that they are practical and workable. It is the policemen out in the street, not the Attorney-General, who have to deal with these laws on a day-to-day basis, to protect the people of this community from crime and to effectively clear up crime when it occurs. It is very important that the provisions are a practical tool and not a millstone around the necks of those law enforcement officers. I assume that, as we see these rules operate, we will be flexible enough, in government or in opposition, to propose and to accept changes if they do not prove to be what they are supposed to be.
Madam Speaker, I must also refer to the provisions dealing with the power of police to demand the name and address of suspects. I well recall the day last year when the Crimes (Amendment) Bill (No. 4) of 1993 was introduced in the Assembly. Hansard records such cries as "Police state!" from the Minister across the way when the legislation was introduced to give police officers the power to demand names and addresses. I note the acrobatic excellence of his backflip in agreeing at this stage to give police powers in very similar terms to those which were proposed in my legislation. There are some differences. The Minister is quite right to make that point. In my respectful opinion, the differences are very small. The Minister listed in his presentation speech seven supposed differences between the legislation that he introduced and the Bill that I had previously introduced. I want to go through those in turn.
The first point refers to the context in which the legislative changes are being made. With great respect, that is a discussion about the philosophy behind the Bills, but it is not an explanation of any difference in the substance of the Bills. The power to demand name and address is distinguished on the basis that, in this Bill, that power depends on a person having actually committed or being in the process of committing an offence. My Bill did, indeed, refer to police believing, on reasonable grounds, that an offence was about to be committed. That is a very small proportion of the total cases in which it would be applied, but - - -
Mr Connolly: It is a huge issue of principle.
MR HUMPHRIES: It is a very small difference, Mr Connolly. The next point is that the power to demand name and address will not be extended to the power to demand information about where a person is going or what he or she has been doing. That does not appear in my legislation, and it has never been suggested that it is there. It will be an offence to refuse or to give a false name and address, the penalty being a fine. That also appears in my legislation; so it is not a difference. There will be no power to demand identification papers. There is a provision in my Bill for the power to demand or to request papers; but there is not any fine that flows from that. So, it is purely a power to request - not a legal requirement to comply.
I would respectfully suggest that there is very little difference between what the Minister has put in his Bill and the effect of my Bill, in any case. Under Mr Connolly's Bill the citizen whose name and address is demanded has a reciprocal right to demand the policeman's name, station and evidence of his being a police officer. In my legislation it is, I think, name, rank and number. Again, that is hardly an extraordinary difference.
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