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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 9 Hansard (7 September) . . Page.. 3091 ..

MR SPEAKER: Order, please! I do not want a discussion across the chamber.

MS TUCKER: I am supporting Mr Humphries' concerns about Labor not giving the government the amendments earlier and I am saying that I think it is unfortunate that we are in this situation because I think the amendments are quite good.

MR STEFANIAK (Minister for Education) (11.02): Mr Speaker, as someone who practised in the criminal law jurisdiction for about two decades, I think that this bill is a major step forward. As Mr Rugendyke said, at the turn of the last century fingerprinting was introduced. No doubt, that caused a lot of consternation at the time. DNA testing certainly is causing a fair bit of consternation now. I can recall a significant step being taken about 10 years ago which caused some consternation, that is, the recording of police interviews by video or simply by a tape recorder. Interestingly enough, some of the concerns expressed then came from the police.

That led to a number of things. Firstly, at least in the ACT, it showed that virtually all of the allegations in relation to so-called police verbals, where police officers would take down a statement without any electronic means and provide it in court, were largely absolute nonsense. As a result of the recording of those interviews, there was a great increase in the number of pleas of guilty by defendants.

This legislation is terribly important because it proves beyond virtually any doubt, not just beyond a reasonable doubt, that a person is, in fact, guilty or not guilty of an offence. Mr Rugendyke mentioned a particularly heinous crime in the ACT which may have been solved if we had had DNA testing at the time. Indeed, it may well be as a result of the passage of this legislation. The Attorney-General said in his tabling speech that there are over 300 DNA samples from unsolved crime scenes in the ACT which may identify the perpetrators of those offences. He went on to say that some of those unsolved crimes were very serious indeed and that their resolution was an absolute priority, which is why this bill is being brought on.

There are a number of safeguards in this bill; there needs to be in such legislation. When the PCA legislation was brought in there had to be safeguards for blood tests. Indeed, for any blood testing procedure there were safeguards to prove that the sample taken was not interfered with in any way. That will be so with DNA testing.

We have already had a positive result from voluntary DNA testing in the town of Wee Waa, where a 91-year-old lady was viciously assaulted and raped. I am not too sure why the criminal who did it came forward. There is such a thing in criminology as a compulsion to confess. Maybe that was so. However, virtually every male in the town was given a DNA test, including the person who committed the offence, and that led to the crime being solved. I think that is terribly important.

DNA testing is a procedure which does resolve a matter beyond doubt. It will lead to a much fairer system in that the time of courts will not be wasted on spurious pleas of not guilty. Police time will not be wasted. If a suspect obviously has not committed the offence, that person can then be discounted and can go on his way. I think that is terribly important.

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