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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2001 Week 6 Hansard (15 June) . . Page.. 1897 ..

Amendment agreed to.

Clause 14, as amended, agreed to.

Clauses 15 and 16, by leave, taken together.

MS TUCKER (5.27): I have some concerns about these clauses. Clause 15 makes it an offence to, without reasonable excuse, hinder or obstruct a security officer while they are exercising their functions. The clause also specifies a maximum penalty of 50 penalty units, imprisonment for six months or both.

The questions that arise for me are: what will a security officer judge to be hindering or obstruction? Will it be someone asking to see their identification? Will it be someone exclaiming that they need to get into court? We hope that "reasonable excuse" will cover these eventualities.

Clause 16 allows a judge or magistrate to close court premises or to order particular people to leave in the interests of securing order and safety in court premises. The clause makes it an offence to contravene such an order and empowers security officers to use reasonable force to enforce these orders.

Again, this is transferring powers to security officers. Surely, if the court was closed for public safety reasons, police officers could be called in to enforce the closure, that being an unusual event. That would ensure that the police power- training and scrutiny govern their discretion to use reasonable force-was not transferred to a security officer, who does not have the same controls placed upon their actions.

This is an area where the court staff are not sure of their powers, including the situation when a magistrate decides the court should become a closed session. Court attendants are currently left with the job of enforcing these orders. As an alternative, someone refusing to leave the court could be told, "Well, I'm adjourning this session until the police come to remove you." This would add some time to the interruption to court proceedings. An alternative legal approach is the trespass provision. Under this law, the most senior person in a place has power to order a person to leave and, if they do not leave, the court officer can call the police.

This is one of the more difficult aspects of this legislation that I am very uncomfortable with. As I said at the beginning, we have ended up with a bit of a mishmash. We do understand that there are safety concerns for the courts but there are also dangers generally to society from this kind of sloppy approach to creating laws. So I just want it on the record that I am not happy with this.

Clauses 15 and 16 agreed to.

Clause 17.

MR STANHOPE (Leader of the Opposition) (5.31): Mr Speaker, my proposed amendment No 8 to clause 17 is consequential on my amendment No 2 being passed. However, as I lost that vote I will withdraw my amendment. Amendment No 9 is similar to my amendment No 8, so I withdraw that as well.

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