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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 8 Hansard (31 August) . . Page.. 2813 ..

MR STANHOPE (continuing):

hands of their personal responsibility for their actions by claiming that they were simply too drunk to know what they were doing.

This is, and has been, a quite vexed area of the law. Questions around intent and criminal action are quite basic and central to aspects of criminal responsibility in relation to this issue of people drinking themselves senseless, committing criminal acts and then pleading not to be held accountable or responsible for their acts. This needs to be addressed and we believe this is an appropriate response.

MS TUCKER (8.41): The Greens are supporting this bill but we have a few concerns. This bill will limit the number of offences where criminal responsibility can be avoided on the basis of self-intoxication. It seems to be a small step recently taken which will achieve the goal of moving towards a legal framework that better reflects community views on the so-called drunk's defence.

As the Women's Legal Centre said in their submission to the JACS committee inquiry, it is counterintuitive and counterproductive to escape criminal responsibility for allowing yourself to loose control. It seems that this bill will move towards this end but without upsetting the legal principle which requires that a person know that they are doing wrong in order to be convicted of doing the wrong. The Greens will support this move.

Although I do not want to discuss here the pros and cons of all the options which have been put forward by the Attorney-General and in submissions to the committee and from other jurisdictions, I do have a few comments to make on some of the issues raised. Several submissions pointed out that this kind of change would need to be accompanied by a good community education campaign if it is to achieve a cultural change in attitudes to intoxication. I also agree with the Attorney-General's point that the publicity surrounding the Nadruku case may well have made more people aware that there was such a thing as a defence based on self-intoxication. I gather from what the Attorney-General said that he too will be working to ensure that an education campaign will surround this change in the law to counteract any impressions left by that case. I do not expect that this change will receive the same level of intensity or length of attention though, so we would like a commitment to this kind of education.

I would also like to point out to this government that it will be difficult, I suppose, for the alcohol and drug program to do this work now that they have implemented last year's review and do not have staff dedicated specifically to education programs as they did in the past. Mr Berry may remember several years ago presenting an award to a community education campaign based on a series of posters with messages around drinking and crime which the alcohol and drug program's education unit produced for the AFP. I would like to think that the unit could do similar work on this point of responsibility, but I fear they are no longer organised or resourced in a way that will allow them to do the same quality of work. In any case, if this law is to have a fair application, the government must find some way to do this work. It is one thing having ignorance as no excuse but it is another to make no effort to make sure that the change is known.

Apart from the need for education, several other suggestions were made which I would like to see some attention given to in the future. The suggestion to enable judges to require those acquitted of offences purely on the basis of self-induced intoxication to seek treatment with alcohol and/or anger management programs is answered by the

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