Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .

Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 4 Hansard (1 April) . . Page.. 1130 ..

MS TUCKER (continuing):

To the extent that the government responded to the other criticisms and observations made by the scrutiny of bills committee, we have been given very little time to consider the new information before being required to debate the legislation. This is not a process that is conducive to proper parliamentary scrutiny, let alone the community's understanding of what their law makers are doing on their behalf.

One of the issues raised by the scrutiny of bills committee-another regular-is that of strict liability offences, where there is no need for the prosecution to establish fault on the part of the defendant in order to convict. The committee said:

The Greens do not take the view that strict liability offences are necessarily a bad thing, but there should be good arguments for using them if we are not to unfairly prejudice citizens' rights-and these arguments should appear in the explanatory statement.

The government's response to this is fairly cursory-that strict liability offences are often more administratively efficient and that most of the offences to which this applies are the less serious ones. In response to this, I would say that not all of them are, and that a lot will depend on how the government administers this legislation. The legislative approach is one that places administrative efficiency above people's rights and, if the government administers this legislation in a heavy-handed or unreasonable way, I fear a scenario where people of goodwill raising money for a worthy purpose might unwittingly transgress a provision of the act and find themselves landed with a criminal conviction for their trouble.

Another matter of concern is that we are being assured that the charities are satisfied with the provisions of the bill. This assurance is based on the two-week period they were given to consider it and on a recent ring-around to see whether any of them had specific problems. While they may have no specific problems to report at this stage, given the consideration they have been able to devote to the legislation, are they really in a position to know how this legislation will affect them before it is operating, before the regulations are drafted and before the government has determined the threshold at which charities will be required to meet higher level accountability requirements? The government intends to determine this threshold in consultation with the charities. This is a good thing. But for a small poorly resourced charity, what side of that threshold they end up on could be critical to how this legislation affects them.

There are some good efficiency measures in the legislation. For example, licences will be issued for up to five years, instead of for each collection as is the case currently. The bill will also apply not just to collections in person but also to collections by telephone, post or fax, which often originate interstate. This bill is largely consistent with the New South Wales legislation, which should make it easier for charities collecting both here and there.

But there are unanswered questions as to how this legislation will operate in practice. The minister has said that "all collections in the ACT will need a licence", and that "it will be compulsory for each person taking part in the collection to display a complying

Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .