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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 6 Hansard (17 June) . . Page.. 1703 ..

MR MOORE (continuing):

In other words, the court cannot use its discretion. With these mandatory sentences, the court cannot take into account that one person should be able to drive and one person should not be able to drive. It has to do with employment. The punishment might not be just losing your drivers licence but also actually losing your job. You suddenly have a mandatory punishment that is extraordinarily onerous when somebody loses their job in a time when jobs are not easy to come by. I think it is unacceptable.

The court will not be able to take into account the level of fines. For a very wealthy person a $300 fine is neither here nor there. For somebody in a very lowly paid job, such as an ASO2 in the Public Service, $300 is a lot of money. For somebody with four or five kids - even somebody with three kids, I can tell you - $300 is a lot of money. These are things that the court has the discretion to decide. The court can consider the circumstances and draw attention to differences, but we are removing that discretion.

In clause 15, proposed subsection 191K(5) automatically appoints opponents to the making of applications to dissolve the disqualification. The opponents are the police and the registrar. The role of the registrar is thus shifted from that of an impartial administrator to that of an opponent of the applicant driver. I am very concerned about that sort of role for the court. The registrar is an officer of the court. In my approaches to the court on a number of occasions I have always seen the registrar as impartial. Suddenly, the registrar of the court is taking a position. To me, that is completely unacceptable.

In clause 15, proposed section 191M provides that the court registry must supply the opponents of the application with information on the history of an application. All these measures tilt the scales of justice away from applicants seeking access to the courts and in favour of officials who work on a presumption that the applicant is unworthy. I think that this is an extraordinary affront to our concept of the system of justice. I find it very difficult to understand how it got through the Government and how it got through the Scrutiny of Bills Committee. I presume Mr Kaine would have looked at the report of the Scrutiny of Bills Committee and thought, "Yes, we have gone through those". My general response is that the work of the Scrutiny of Bills Committee is thorough and effective. I have been very pleased with the incredible assistance it provides to members, but I will come back to the committee because I do have a concern.

There is also a problem of excessive penalties in clause 8. Proposed section 11E has a maximum penalty for breach of conditions on a special licence of $5,000 or six months' gaol. In clause 15, the penalty is $10,000 or 12 months' gaol. These large penalties are disproportionate to the offence and are oppressive. They reflect a kind of bureaucratic paranoia about the level of the problem more than they reflect the social harm. It is the social harm that we are actually dwelling on in these pieces of legislation. I would be quite willing to reject this Bill outright and say, "Mr Kaine, take it away. Go and do it again". But Mr Kaine has suggested a round table. I think that that is a better way for us to move forward. I am pleased that we will be doing that. This Bill carries too many injustices in it. I would have to ask how this Minister let it through. I would have to ask how the Attorney-General, who allowed it through in Cabinet, did not recognise these things.

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