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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 9 Hansard (7 September) . . Page.. 3093 ..

MR HUMPHRIES (Treasurer, Attorney-General and Minister for Justice and Community Safety) (11.09), in reply: I am glad that members around the chamber are prepared to support this legislation. It is difficult to exaggerate the importance of this legislation. It provides a comprehensive legislative framework dealing with the most important breakthrough in crime detection and crime prevention that we have seen in at least 100 years and perhaps that we have ever seen. I think it is easy to defend those statements and not to have to suggest that they are hyperbole in any way.

Mr Speaker, the legislation will facilitate the provision of important powers to the Australian Federal Police as part of a national scheme whereby other Australian police and, potentially, law enforcement authorities in other parts of the world can place on a database information which will assist in identifying a whole host of crimes and criminal activities that technology before this point has not been able to adequately address.

The example that I have given before is that of sexual assault. Criminologists will suggest that sexual assault offenders are people who are most likely to have committed previously relatively minor offences such as burglary and common assault. Mr Speaker, if the DNA of a person who commits a sexual assault is on a database by virtue of an earlier offence having been committed, it is extremely likely that the police will be able to identify quickly who it is that has committed the sexual assault in question because it is extremely difficult to commit a sexual assault without leaving a sample of DNA. It is extremely difficult, Mr Speaker, unless the person attempts to do so in some sort of spacesuit.

Since sexual assaults are generally carefully premeditated crimes, it follows that a person who would consider committing such a crime is likely to be very seriously deterred from taking the step of committing that crime because they know that the likelihood of being detected for that crime amounts to almost a certainty.

Mr Speaker, that kind of impact on crime is not limited merely to the category of sexual offences. A person who, for example, breaks into and enters a home very frequently will spend enough time in that place to leave a DNA sample, whether it be skin scraped off as the person is climbing through a window, saliva on a glass or something the person might pick up in the kitchen or hair that drops from their head. Whatever it might be, Mr Speaker, the chance is there.

How much impact will there be on burglary in this community if it is possible to conduct the tests that will pick up DNA samples of individuals? The potential is enormous. Although the technology may not be applied at that breadth at this point, at least in the early stages of this new technology, it is certainly capable of doing that. That is why none of us should stand in the way of this new technology being applied as soon as possible in this place.

Mr Speaker, I was most distressed to hear Ms Tucker's comments about the abuse of DNA technology. Let me concede at the outset that she is quite right to suggest that technology can be abused. Of course it can. But so can any other crime-fighting tool which is associated with the collection of evidence.

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