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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2001 Week 5 Hansard (1 May) . . Page.. 1285 ..

MS TUCKER (continuing):

missing. In our existing Bail Act, the authorised officer or the court must consider all of these matters as set out in section 22 for adults. Children have a different set of criteria at section 23.

The decision should be made with reference to the particulars of each case and in a way that can be reviewed. I am making these comments now because from the scrutiny of bills report, the government's response and what Labor has said in some of the discussion today-there actually has not been any discussion on it, but there is a discussion about common law right to bail-we do not think it is the most important question at all, although obviously other people have changed their positions on that, because it has not really come up.

As the scrutiny of bills committee put it-I am paraphrasing a little here-the question before us, as Michael Moore says, is whether this is appropriate legislation. Is this a circumstance-the people affected having been charged but not yet tried-which warrants special treatment, or is this step an undue trespass on the personal rights of the accused? The rights in issue are the right to liberty and the presumption of innocence. These are the ethical matters for us to consider here in this place. They are very serious matters, and we must not blithely whittle away these rights. That is how the basis of our democracy and judicial system can be lost. That may sound to some of the members here an exaggeration. It is just another little change. The problem is that all these little changes are building up.

There are some merits to this legislation, but on the whole the Greens feel that we have to oppose it. We will not attempt to amend it, because it is clear that the majority of this parliament thinks that this is a supportable piece of legislation.

We think it is not acceptable to support the addition of this new circumstance in which there is a presumption against the general entitlement to bail for a person accused of a serious offence allegedly committed while the accused person was on bail for another serious allegedly committed offence.

I need to remind members that when we say "serious crime" in the context of this bill it is about the length of maximum prison sentence, which is five years or more. As members have already said, this legislation is mainly about property crime. We have heard members say here today that they recognise that most of the property crime in the ACT is drug related.

Problems with the remand centre have also been brought up as a pragmatic consequence of this bill being passed. I would say to members here that there is a much greater consequence which we need to focus on: the fundamental principles of our criminal justice system and protection of people who get involved in it.

Our existing Bail Act, which I understand is not perfect, sets out the principles to be considered when deciding whether to grant bail in a balanced way. In particular, in section 22, which is about adults charged with offences that are not minor, there is a list of matters which must be taken into account, covering the probability of the person appearing in court, the interest of the person charged (spelled out in three subparagraphs) and the protection of the community, which includes the likelihood of the person committing an offence while released on bail.

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