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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1999 Week 4 Hansard (21 April) . . Page.. 1031 ..

MR HUMPHRIES (continuing):

This is another illustration of why we sometimes need time to look at Bills very carefully and cannot assume that on all occasions Parliamentary Counsel is perfect in the way in which it drafts legislation. Sometimes mistakes are made, and on an occasion like this it is useful to have a second set of eyes examine the particular piece of legislation.

I have to reiterate very firmly the Government's view that what we are doing today is unprecedented and very dangerous.

Mr Berry: It was not dangerous when you first wrote about it, though.

MR HUMPHRIES: It was most certainly very dangerous when I first wrote to members. That is why when I wrote to members on that earlier occasion, particularly members of the Justice Committee, and in turn the Leader of the Opposition, I said - and I quote my letter:

The concerns that I had before the limitation period had expired are even greater today, because the limitation period has expired and any people who at the stage when this correspondence took place had some prospect of being prosecuted before that period had expired have, since that time, faced the reality that their period of liability has ended. That period of liability is to be revived by the Assembly today.

Mr Berry: No, it is not.

MR HUMPHRIES: Yes, it is. Most clearly it is to be revived. Let us be clear. We are taking a person, or possibly several people - these are notional people at this stage; they are people who do not have names at this stage - and we are saying of those people that today, at this moment, they are immune from being prosecuted under the occupational health and safety legislation and that because of the operation of the law of this Territory they have no liability to face in the court for anything they may have done but after today, with the passage of this amendment and the legislation, they will now be subject to that prosecution. That is clearly retrospective and that is clearly reviving a criminal liability retrospectively. The Assembly has never done that before. I think it is most sad and regrettable that we are doing that today.

This is an issue of principle. It is an issue which has difficult application on occasions. The Assembly has flirted with retrospectivity in the past. In the past it has certainly taken the step of removing people's civil capacity to sue, for example. The decision was made in 1994, I believe, to allow a person who might have had a right to sue a lottery company over a lottery ticket to have that right removed retrospectively, after the right might have accrued. That is true. It has occurred at that level before.

It has never been the case that this Assembly has retrospectively revived or imposed a criminal liability on a person. If such an offence has been committed, it was committed in the course of people's working lives and therefore this is very much the imposition or

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