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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 11 Hansard (22 October) . . Page.. 3970 ..

MR STEFANIAK (continuing):

suggested in their report that they want it to happen. Far from its being a problem for police, prosecutors and the judiciary, they want it. The police want it, the prosecution certainly want it and the judges and magistrates want it.

I have stood in this place before and criticised our courts, and I will do it again, if I think that they are soft on crime, but I am not going to do so in this instance because I have heard virtually every magistrate say at some time over the last year, "I had to grant bail because there is a presumption in favour of bail. I didn't particularly want to do it, but there is that presumption."I have heard Justice Crispin say it. I think I have heard Justice Gray say it. Perhaps Justice Connolly has not been there long enough. They have said that in a number of instances and it is on the public record for anyone to see.

It is little wonder that even members of the judiciary-on this panel there is a magistrate and there is the president of the Court of Appeal of the Australian Capital Territory-want to see it occur. I think that that is a pretty powerful argument indeed. Yes, it is one single issue. Yes, the Chief Minister will be bringing in a suite of reforms, some of which, from his issues paper, seem quite good; there are some others there that I will probably need to look at more closely. But that is no reason for not supporting this eminently sensible piece of legislation which the Law Reform Commission has called for and which the community is very much crying out for and the courts themselves want to see introduced. Mr Stanhope's mobile phone analogy was absolute rubbish, certainly in relation to this piece of legislation. It probably was even when we had the debate in 2001.

Ms Dundas said that the Democrats would not support the bill. She mentioned a number of civil liberties arguments. She said that the courts should have the right to decide. I have answered that by saying that the courts are actually supportive of this idea and think that it is a good one. She said that the courts are doing their best at this point in time. I do not think I could possibly agree with Ms Dundas in terms of sentencing, but bail reform in this territory over the last two or three years has been the subject of a lot of very solid impact from the courts.

Statements made by the former Chief Justice, Jeffrey Miles, and the Chief Magistrate, Ron Cahill, were immensely helpful to me as Attorney-General in bringing in section 9A and then in doing a bit of a tidy-up three months later, in August 2001, and I pay tribute to those two gentlemen for the fact that they were at the centre of permanent improvements there. Indeed, as I mentioned, members of the judiciary are very much behind the genesis of what we have before us now.

I will not comment on the valiant effort made by Mr Quinlan while waiting for his learned leader to come on down, although even his government is going to reverse the presumption in favour of bail for murderers when it finally gets around to doing something about it. I suspect that a significant element of the government's approach is that it is saying, "We cannot let the opposition get the jump on us on something. Let's make up some excuses, have a go at it and slag off in some way because we are going to have a much more comprehensive package."

That is a hoary old one indeed. I have heard that one before. That is probably the real reason for the government's opposition to this bill. It is not a matter of saying that there might be a little less efficiency if they do not introduce it or that it might cost the

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