Page 3818 - Week 13 - Tuesday, 8 November 1994
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and, quite clearly, people, especially young people, know their rights. I can remember, back in 1977, lecturing to a group of Year 10 Muswellbrook High School students about their rights as citizens. They certainly had a good awareness of what their rights were vis-a-vis the police. That was shown by the number of questions they asked me. I was in private practice at the time. My experience with young people in Canberra, when I came back from Muswellbrook in 1978, was very much the same.
My experience as a prosecutor and, more recently, back again as a defence counsel, has brought home to me that people in Canberra are very aware of their rights. A lot of young people, especially, who are out there on the streets, who go to various bars and get out and enjoy themselves, are very aware of their rights. Our courts operate to ensure that police do not step outside the bounds of how they are meant to operate. It is incorrect to say that power is very much in the hands of the police. Perhaps in many areas it is not, and that is why, to counter crime adequately, certain measures are necessary which might be seen as restricting civil liberties.
This measure, which Mr Humphries attempted to bring in in 1993, was thwarted by the Government then. Lo and behold! The Attorney-General has done a triple turn and a double backflip and has brought in very similar legislation in this part of the Bill. To try to differentiate between an indictable offence and a summary offence is very impractical, because most indictable offences are now dealt with in the Magistrates Court, just as all summary offences are, and there is no real significance in an artificial distinction, which might have been very relevant in the early part of this century but which, certainly in terms of modern law and modern criminal law in the Territory, is not really a relevant distinction. So, with the greatest respect to Mr Moore, I think that his proposed amendment is a bit of a legal nonsense.
It is also unreasonable to expect a police officer to be a walking law library and to be able to work out whether he can do this now; whether he should arrest this person; whether this is indictable; whether it is summary; whether a fight in a public place is really offensive behaviour or an assault; whether he can ask these people their name and address - and make an instant, snap decision when the police officer might be having his head belted in at the time of that fracas. There are already in our law a number of decisions that police officers have to make when faced with situations in the course of their job. I think this would be just an unnecessary additional burden on them. It would serve no practical purpose to differentiate between indictable and summary, with the way the law currently operates in the Territory. Mr Connolly made some comments to that effect which I, as someone who has practised in criminal law for many years, would certainly fully support.
MR CONNOLLY (Attorney-General and Minister for Health) (5.30), in reply: Madam Speaker, I never thought it would come to this. This is the first law and order debate since Mr Stefaniak returned to the Assembly, and I have to say that I agree with what Mr Stefaniak just had to say. I do not know whether I just said that! I will have to have a good think about it. On a more serious note, I thank members for their general support for this legislation. It is an important package of legislation.
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