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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 11 Hansard (22 October) . . Page.. 3963 ..

MS DUNDAS (continuing):

Mr Stefaniak's. Hopefully, Mr Stanhope will join us in the next 30 seconds or so to tell us what he wants to see with regard to bail. While I agree that there is scope for bail reform in the ACT, I am not convinced that this selective and piecemeal approach is the best way to proceed with the issue. As I have said, the ACT Democrats will not be supporting this legislation today.

MR QUINLAN (Treasurer, Minister for Economic Development, Business and Tourism and Minister for Sport, Racing and Gaming) (5.45): The government will not be supporting this bill either. It seems to fly in the face of the presumption of innocence, as Ms Dundas has quite accurately pointed out. We do have a process for evaluation. Bail is not automatic. There are bail hearings, and we ought to allow them to continue.

I can envisage cases where people would be accused of crimes and later found innocent or where people accused even of murder would not necessarily be a danger to anybody else, even if it turns out that they did commit that murder. The government will not be supporting this bill, I trust.

MR STANHOPE (Chief Minister, Attorney-General, Minister for Environment and Minister for Community Affairs) (5.46): The government and I concur with those sentiments.

Mr Stefaniak's bill is a single issue bill, it is a bill which tries to imitate much of the work that the government has done and it is a bill which confounds basic aspects of the legal system. The view of the government is that the bill would place an unfair burden on the police, the prosecutors and the judiciary.

As members would recall, in June of this year I tabled the government's response to the ACT Law Reform Commission's report on bail. The government's response addressed all of the 25 issues raised by the Law Reform Commission and addressed further issues identified by the government, whilst Mr Stefaniak's bill is an attempt to address just one of those 25 issues.

I think that it is fair to say that it is simply an attempt because, in trying to be political and to appear relevant in relation to this debate, Mr Stefaniak has tabled a bill which is supposed to give the community, in my respectful opinion, the impression that he is tough on crime. The only thing, in the view of the government, that this bill does is to make it tough on our police and on our court systems.

At first glance, the bill seems to copy the Law Reform Commission's recommendation on offences which could hold a presumption against bail. At second glance, it is clear that the bill imitates aspects of the government's policy. On closer inspection, it is apparent that central parts of Mr Stefaniak's bill operate in a far different way from the Law Reform Commission's intentions.

Firstly, the government has already stated its policy on introducing a presumption against bail for charges of murder, attempted murder and accessory to murder. The government has also said that, once the territory's drug trafficking offences are modernised, it will introduce a presumption against bail for those offences that target organised crime. In the meantime, the government is removing the presumption for bail for these drug offences as they currently stand.

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