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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2001 Week 8 Hansard (9 August) . . Page.. 2765 ..

MS TUCKER (continuing):

It is so easy to cast the argument as one of reasonable police pursuing fraudulent impostors. But we cannot assume that all police will always observe their powers fairly, and we know that it is not just about fraudulent impostors.

The situation for many people when they interact with law enforcement can be complex and very unfortunate. Making us all vulnerable to charges of fraud and dishonesty whenever we bounce a cheque is shifting the balance too far. The fact that South Australia, Victoria and New South Wales have taken this course of action is no reassurance.

Scrutiny Report No 10 raises some fundamental questions in regard to post-conviction reviews and orders to review acquittals and grant a retrial. While we have had the scrutiny report since last Friday, it does raise questions about how we deal with legislation here in the Assembly. Very often we get the scrutiny of bills report close to the anticipated day of debate on the bill covered by the report, and then perhaps we get a response from government on the day we plan to debate the bill. It is not good.

Scrutiny of bills is an important part of the democratic process and provides the only non-partisan oversight of the impact legislation has on personal rights and liberties. That scrutiny reports are often tabled or circulated too late in the process is one problem we ought to address. That the government response is made available on the day of the debate, if we are lucky, is another.

Members of the ACT Assembly are elected under the Hare-Clark system, a system supported by the ACT community in a referendum and likely to remain with us. Consequently, there will almost certainly always be small parties and Independent members in the Assembly playing an important role in shaping the law of the territory. People who claim to be at heart democrats, with a small "d", should remember that democracy is not just about asking the electorate to decide on an issue; it is also about ensuring that our democratic institution can work effectively.

The issues raised by the scrutiny of bills committee and the government's response to those issues ought to be considered very carefully by those of us on the crossbench. If government cannot manage business in this place so that members on the crossbench can properly consider the impact of legislation, then it is not meeting its democratic responsibilities.

In that light then, the scrutiny of bills committee comments on the proposed provision for inquiries into convictions are disturbing. The committee begins by making the point that "provision for post-conviction inquiry is an essential component of a scheme for criminal justice". The committee makes the point time and again that there appears to be no justification for the details of this particular scheme. It raises questions regarding the narrowness of its application, the complexity of its drafting, its retrospective application, the unclear nature of such an inquiry's relationship with the police, and so on.

The scrutiny of bills report is also seriously concerned with the introduction of orders to review acquittals. It makes the point emphatically that the finality of acquittal is the keystone of personal freedom and reminds us that it is the state which is both prosecutor and court, tilting the balance in terms of power and resources very much

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