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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1999 Week 4 Hansard (21 April) . . Page.. 1032 ..

MR HUMPHRIES (continuing):

reimposition of a penalty on people who are workers - the workers Mr Berry talks about quite frequently, the workers whose rights Mr Berry is prepared to discard because he sees political advantage in doing so on this occasion. That, in my view, is shameful.

Members of the crossbench are not listening to this. Obviously they have made up their minds already. It is unfortunate that the acts took place in the first place, if indeed any acts took place that may have given rise to subsequent prosecutions that would be possible under the amendment of the legislation that is now proposed. It is unfortunate that those acts ever took place, but the law of the Territory is presently couched in such a way as to give people who have committed those acts the protection of the law when a certain period of time has run. That protection is being removed. We are taking from people a protection which they enjoy at law at the moment. I think that the Territory Assembly is letting down the community in taking that step.

In my remarks on the Bill I posed a number of questions which have not been answered by Mr Berry or by other people - Ms Tucker or Mr Kaine - in the course of this debate. One of those questions is: Where do we draw the line in this kind of activity? I pose the question, the very real question, of people who may be immune from prosecution in relation to certain sexual offences because a mistake by the Federal Government in enacting legislation back in, I think, 1985. Almost exactly the same issue arises. I ask members of this place to consider the question I now put to them and maybe answer it when they get up to speak. Ms Tucker might be able to answer this question. Mr Kaine might be able to answer this question. I do not know whether they can. What will you do when someone petitions you to revive criminal liability in respect of those people as well? Will you accept that responsibility as well? Will you agree that that liability should be revived in those cases as well? It seems to me you will have no choice but to do so, because you have opened the gate on this issue.

You have established a new principle - a principle which, I might point out, in some countries of the world is actually unconstitutional. Were we a legislature that existed in the United States, what we are doing now would be constitutionally impossible because we would be imposing or reimposing a criminal liability on those who presently enjoy the protection of the law.

I have no truck with people who break the law and cause loss or inconvenience or even in some way may have caused death to people as a result of their actions, but I do support the principle that the law ought to be fair and ought to operate consistently and not be changed in such a way as to cause liability to be revived or imposed after it has ceased to exist. That is a principle this Territory Assembly has defended consistently until today. Today it is prepared to discard that principle.

The other question I ask is: If, as Mr Berry maintains, there was some negligence on the part of the Government, or me in particular as Attorney-General, in not dealing with this particular amendment before the end of the expiry of the limitation period - and I emphatically reject that that is the case - on what basis are we saying that these individuals out in the community, these workers, should be penalised because of an omission on my part? Why should these workers be penalised, have their rights removed, because I neglected to bring a certain Bill to the Assembly at a particular time?

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