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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 7 Hansard (25 June) . . Page.. 2443 ..

MR STEFANIAK (continuing):

(c) contravening a protection order or restraining order in the course of committing which the accused person is alleged to have used or threatened to use violence and the accused person has within the preceding 12 months been convicted or found guilty of an offence in the course of committing which he or she used or threatened to use violence against any person;

(d) an offence of trafficking in relation to a commercial quantity of a drug of dependence or an offence of conspiring to commit such an offence; or

(e) an offence under section 231 (1), 233A or 233B (1) of the Customs Act 1901 of the Commonwealth (as amended and in force for the time being) in relation to a commercial quantity of narcotics goods within the meaning of that Act unless the court is satisfied exceptional circumstances exist which justify the grant of bail;

And then they conclude:

unless, having regard to the matters referred to in whichever of section 22 and 23 apply to the accused person, the court or authorised officer is satisfied that it would be appropriate to grant bail notwithstanding the gravity of the offence charged.

What they are effectively saying there is that the presumption currently in favour of granting of bail for any offence, no matter how serious, should be reversed. It is just a simple reversal for offences such as treason and murder; for any offence where an offensive weapon is used or threatened to be used, or a replica. That obviously covers offences such as armed robbery and would indeed cover a number of sexual assault offences.

It also covers offences in relation to persons contravening protection orders. Remember that the authorised officer, who is a police officer, already has an automatic presumption to not grant bail at that initial stage. But then they take it somewhat further by stating that, again, this general presumption against bail should also refer to someone contravening a protection or restraining order in the circumstances I have listed.

In relation to drugs: for offences under our Poisons and Drugs Act and the Customs Act bail will not be granted for trafficking commercial quantities-in other words, serious quantities-of actual drugs. Basically, that is what they are recommending.

I note the government has a paper, which it has put out. I suspect this particular bill and its enactment have forced them to speed up things a little bit. I note there are a number of, at a first glance, quite worthy recommendations and some other things we need to consider. In terms of this recommendation, which is the most serious of all the recommendations, I don't believe the government paper goes far enough. It only recommends reversing the presumption for murder or murder-related offences and those drug offences.

Quite clearly the Law Reform Commission, which deliberated on this from January 1998 through to July 2001, has a different view. Anyone who reads the report can see

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