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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2001 Week 5 Hansard (1 May) . . Page.. 1286 ..

MS TUCKER (continuing):

In other words, there is already a requirement to consider likelihood of reoffending. I understand that in practice this includes consideration of when someone is on bail with a charge against them. But this assessment is made properly, balanced against these other principles. This bill seeks to isolate one aspect of the decision and prioritise it at the expense of civil liberties on which we all depend and which I thought we all valued, whether or not we are aware of the importance of them in our everyday lives.

There are exceptional situations in which the presumption to bail is reversed-for domestic violence offences and for someone who has already been convicted of an offence but is preparing an appeal to that conviction. In the first case, domestic violence, while the case is not proven at this point, the risk to persons-the risk to life-is so immediate that there is a strong case for refusing bail. The consequences are too great. The exception is subject to an assessment of the likelihood of danger to the relevant person, the alleged victim, and this process and presumption against bail are there because of the specific nature of that offence.

In the case of someone already convicted and preparing an appeal, it is different again. In some sense you could say that the thorough examination of the evidence is not yet complete. However, there has been at least one major process towards it. The legal process, which we would presume to have been conducted properly and justly, though clearly this is not always the case, has completed its first step, and so we have a reasonable basis for considering it likely that the person is guilty of one offence.

These situations differ from the case the government wants us to add. In this case, the accused has not had their day in court, we cannot be sure of the evidence, and we must presume that they are innocent. The arguments which we hear in support of lessening the effect of these principles for the people of the ACT, from both Labor and Liberal and other members, are that the community has a right to safety. This is certainly true. We know how awful the repeat burglaries are, and we have seen recently one or two notorious cases where someone has allegedly reoffended-thefts and robberies of an alarming nature, it is true.

But we are here to represent people and to consider thoroughly all the implications of changing the law. We must ask ourselves why this is happening. What are the possible means of addressing those causes? What are we doing that is exacerbating those causes, if anything? Then we are prepared to assess what will be affected by the various means of addressing the problem and, finally, what is the best solution. They are basic questions, but I cannot see that these have been answered by the government or its supporters in this matter. I am not surprised that Mr Stanhope took so long to speak in response to this bill, because he has such an unclear position.

This bill is supposed to address the high impact of repeat offender burglaries in Canberra. The police say they are fed up with watching people whom they know are guilty reoffend while they are released on bail for a burglary or some other offence. Given that we do have a balanced set of criteria to which the decision to grant bail is legally supposed to have reference, what is going wrong here?

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