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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 13 Hansard (2 December) . . Page.. 4340 ..

MR MOORE (8.03): It seems to me, Mr Speaker, that, as an overall approach, the Prisoners' Interstate Leave Bill is a very sensible Bill and provides a quite enlightened approach. As such, it is appropriate that it receives support. The comment on the racial test in the Scrutiny of Bills Committee report was quite interesting. I looked at that and thought that, in law, we ought not to be making decisions based on race. It is an awful precedent and something that we have to be very careful of.

I weighed that against the notion in the Racial Discrimination Act of special measures to benefit a racial group. Clearly, the question in my mind was: Have Aboriginal prisoners suffered, or do they suffer, from disadvantage or discrimination which makes justifiable the provision of special benefits by way of compensation, or reparation, in the terms in which it is presented here? Additionally, I have to ask: Is there something special about families and extended families in the conditions presented here? In both cases I come up with the answer: Yes, there are special reasons. We heard the Chief Minister earlier today talking about some of the problems that are associated with Aboriginal deaths in custody. So, there are issues that we need to deal with. There are issues that we do have to look at, such as especial advantage for people who are especially disadvantaged. For those reasons, I will be supporting what is otherwise, I think, a fairly unusual move.

We have amendments circulated by the Attorney-General, one of which deals with moving prisoners around, not just for the prisoner's sake; but, additionally, to assist a police officer of the ACT or another State or Territory with the investigation of an offence - that causes me more concern; so, I will be interested in listening to the justification of that from Mr Humphries - and then, widening it even more, for any other purpose described in the regulations. I presume that the regulations in this case will be disallowable, as would be normal. But, even so, I must say that I would be reluctant to deal with "other purposes". So, for both of these amendments, I will need to hear a very effective argument.

MR HUMPHRIES (Attorney-General) (8.06), in reply: Mr Speaker, I thank members for their support for the legislation. I want to emphasise that amendments like this are quite important in bringing our legislation generally up to date when it comes to dealing with remandees and prisoners that the ACT courts deal with from time to time. I think, when we look at legislation like this on something as apparently simple as providing for circumstances where prisoners should be released from the custody of a remand centre, we realise, in fact, how very ramshackle the state of the ACT's legislation on issues relating to the custody of prisoners has been up until very recently. In many respects, the ACT has never had a legal system geared around the needs of those incarcerated either in or by the ACT. Having to make fairly fundamental amendments like this to legislation underscores how much work we have to do to put in place a comprehensive system to deal with our own remandees and sentenced prisoners emerging from the criminal justice system of our Territory. So, a lot of work has yet to be done; but this is another step in that direction. Obviously, giving prisoners interstate leave is a very important step towards being able to deal with a range of complex issues that arise when prisoners are in that position.

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