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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 13 Hansard (3 December) . . Page.. 4505 ..

MR HUMPHRIES (continuing):

For a government which has worked very hard in the last three years to put the resources of policing out of police stations and settings like that and into cars, on motorcycles, on pushbikes and on foot, that kind of potential holds great promise and is one which I believe we need to support. This issue has been discussed very widely since Mr Moore brought his Bill forward in September. I personally have arranged to have consultation with a range of bodies, including the Australian Federal Police Association, the Law Society, the Bar Association, the Legal Aid Office, the courts, the Council of Civil Liberties and so on, and some concerns have come to light which I think we need to address.

Most importantly, I suppose, the Community Law Reform Committee has recommended that a number of the offences referred to in the Bill ought not be subject to the legislation because they contain an element of discretion; that is, that a person who commits these offences ought to be subject to a charge, not to an expiation notice. I am inclined to accept that advice, at least until we see how the legislation would operate on the other offences, particularly noise-related offences and drinking in a public place, and if it works in respect of that class of offences to then expand it into other offences where that kind of benefit might be obtained.

Essentially, I would say that Mr Moore's Bill does address an important need within the ACT policing system, within the criminal justice system, if you like; but there are a number of things we need to address. I think we need to stop the scheme from operating on under-18s, at least at this stage. We ought to allow some notice to be had by courts of the offences which have been expiated, so that, for example, a person with a string of expiation notices for a particular offence would not appear before a court as a person with no criminal record at all. That might strictly be true, but that would not mean that they had not been guilty of some fairly serious matters under the legislation.

We need to delete those offences that I referred to before as not being recommended by the CLRC to proceed under this legislation. Perhaps we should change the basis on which warrants issue for those who do not expiate their notice, so that a further process of police obligation is imposed to go and serve notices on people who have not paid their fines, thus removing the benefit of being able to cut police time in issuing the fine in the first place. We should also deal with the question of establishing the offender's identity. Of course, this will work only if the police officer concerned is reasonably certain that the person who says he is Bill Wood actually is Bill Wood, before the notice is issued to him. Mr Speaker, we need to make sure that those sorts of things are addressed. They are being addressed at the moment within my office by amendments. I look forward to coming back next week and dealing with those amendments in order to make this Bill law.

MR WOOD (8.13): Mr Speaker, the Opposition supports the aim of this legislation, and that is to keep police on the beat. That is an important principle and one we would like to see carried out. We do not have a dispute with that. It might be said, as I have heard, that this is bringing about greater efficiency. Well, that is a good thing, although, given the current Federal Government, when I hear the words "greater efficiency" I do have some alarm. They can also mean a number of other things.

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