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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2002 Week 3 Hansard (6 March) . . Page.. 624 ..

MR STEFANIAK (continuing):

I will cover all the comments that were made. I agree with the comments made by my two colleagues, Mr Smyth especially. Mr Smyth laid out all the other measures taken by the previous government-early intervention, trying to get to the root causes and trying to ensure that people were suitably rehabilitated so that they did not reoffend. A lot has been put in place. We probably have more of those measures than any other state or territory in the Commonwealth.

You can have all the measures in place and you can do absolutely everything to try to address root causes and ensure that people do not go too far down the track of crime and that, if they do, systems are in place to help them, but there will still be people who commit crime. As long as we have humans on this earth, there will still be people who will not abide by the laws of society and who will commit crimes regardless of all the steps taken to help them.

We heard the tired old comment by Ms Tucker that it is really the fault of everyone except the criminal; that it is society's fault; that things should occur to help them; and that effectively criminals are not responsible for their actions. I am sorry, I cannot buy that. A lot of people who are in very difficult circumstances and to whom life has dealt a very bad hand would not dream of committing a crime and are law-abiding, honest citizens. Very few people in public housing cause mayhem and make other persons' lives a misery and tarnish the reputation of others. The vast majority of people in public housing are good solid tenants, responsible and respectful of others' rights. The actions of a few tarnish the reputation of others. It is the same with people in difficult circumstances.

There are always going to be people who, unfortunately, will have to be locked up. You can take all the steps in the world and that will still happen. That is something a lot of people fail to appreciate. That is why you need programs across the whole gamut, but you need proper laws in place to ensure that the ordinary law-abiding citizens of our community are properly protected.

I am concerned to see the Labor Party ducking and weaving and not wanting to own up to what the police are telling them about the Bail Act. The statistics, the objective facts and all the commonsense facts are telling them that that law is working. I am sure the police have told the Labor Party that there are about 232 repeat offenders in the ACT for crimes like burglary. Before we changed the bail legislation, there was a presumption in favour of bail, which made it virtually impossible for a court not to give bail to a person charged with burglary. Now if they commit more offences and are charged again, they are remanded in custody. This makes it impossible for them to get out there and create havoc in the community and commit further offences while they are waiting for their case to be dealt with. It is as simple as that. All the facts are showing that the law is working.

The courts, by and large, wanted these measures. These measures are very effective. I had magistrates coming to me saying, "With this presumption in favour of bail, we really have our hands tied." Further improvements to the Bail Act are necessary. The Law Reform Commission has made recommendations. In a recent case before Justice Gray, because of the presumption in favour of bail for very serious crimes, someone charged with murder was given bail, despite the strong objections by the prosecution and the family. We need to further things along the lines recommended by the Law Reform

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