Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .

Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1998 Week 3 Hansard (26 May) . . Page.. 551 ..

MR HUMPHRIES (continuing):

of offences be taken into account. Imagine what you members here would be saying in those circumstances, if the Government resisted that course of action. You would be saying, "How dare you ignore the views of the judges and the prosecution in this community! Are you not being terribly unfair to our courts?". You would be up in arms. You people would be banging on the Government's door.

Mr Moore: No, we would not. We would say, "Sorry, Your Honour; you have got it wrong". "You have got it wrong", is what we would say.

MR HUMPHRIES: No. You would agree with what they were saying there in that case, Mr Moore. You would be saying that they had got it right. Mr Speaker, I think members in this place should take a little time to think about these things. There have been some quite nonsensical things said about this legislation. The Government is not revolutionising the law. The Government is merely reinstating the law as it stood before 1993 and as it stands at the moment in every other Australian jurisdiction.

Mr Moore accused us of following conservative jurisdictions when we reflected the decisions of codification of the law in other places. I might point out that the Queensland Act was actually put in place by the Goss Labor Government, not by the National Party Government in that place. So, Labor governments have also operated under the same common-law principles, and we seek to reinstate that now. Mr Speaker, Mr Stanhope said:

I think there is not a single judge or lawyer in town who does not believe that we have, at this stage, a Full Federal Court decision that basically accepts that the situation that we have is quite satisfactory; that it is not confusing. We do not need to beat up a supposed problem on the basis that a judge in the minority felt that there was an issue.

I am not quite sure what that means; but, Mr Speaker, if he is saying that there is not a single judge or lawyer in town who believes that we should be taking this step, then I would invite him to telephone the Chief Justice and go and have a talk to him about the matter, because a number of judges take that point of view.

Mr Speaker, I am also asked to respond to the Justice and Community Safety Committee report - what I will call the scrutiny of Bills report - on this matter. Mr Speaker, I do so with some slight regret, because I have to say that this report gives me a little bit of concern. There were two comments in this report which were relied upon by members earlier in the debate to suggest that they should not pass this Bill. One was under the heading "Undue trespass on personal rights and liberties". I will quote the comments in full:

The Committee draws to the attention of the Assembly the potential impact of these amendments on the range of choices which would be open to a sentencing judge or magistrate. It is however impossible at this point to predict just what effect (if any) there might be in this respect.

Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .