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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 11 Hansard (22 October) . . Page.. 3971 ..

MR STEFANIAK (continuing):

taxpayers more, but it is not necessarily a life and death situation. This is a very important issue for our community. People in our community have been seriously injured or, indeed, killed by other people who should have been refused bail.

It was most unfortunate in the first place-I think it was in 1992, but Ms Tucker said 1998-that the Bail Act which we have been in the process of amending for a few years was introduced in the way it was introduced. There are some serious problems with it, having an automatic presumption in favour of bail for any offence. That just flies in the face of common sense and reason. I hate to think how many people have been injured as a result. I do not know whether anyone has actually been killed, but I hate to think how many people have been needlessly injured and traumatised and how many businesses have been robbed.

I suspect that there have been a few people killed as the provision has been in existence for a long time. But how many people have been injured? How many police officers have had their heads punched in unnecessarily or been put to extra trouble just to go and get criminals who should have been remanded in custody but have got out through, effectively, the revolving door situation that the 1992 act has brought about? How many witnesses might have been affected?

Mr Pratt: Witness support.

MR STEFANIAK: Yes, how many witnesses have had to be supported? How many people have been injured and traumatised in our community? An absolute waste of money, police time and effort and court time and effort have occurred because of the misguided presumption in favour of bail for everything that a previous Labor government brought in. In terms of that, they should be ashamed of themselves.

Rather than making ridiculous, pathetic excuses for not backing sensible legislation like this bill, which faithfully reflects what the Law Reform Commission recommended and which has been faithfully drafted in that regard by very competent draftsmen, I would have hoped that the government would have been gracious enough to at least give this one a tick. To use the words of my friend Mr Pratt, maybe the government is too soft on crime to back something as sensible as my sentencing bill, but this bill is different. It meets the wishes of a plethora of reasonable people on all sides of the spectrum who form the Law Reform Commission and complements to a large extent what the Chief Minister will be bringing in. The bill actually provides the teeth for it, which is the most important part of it, certainly as far as the community is concerned, but the government goes off on a tangent and makes a spurious attack which is just plain wrong and tries to pooh-pooh the rest of it.

I reject Mr Stanhope's claims about the bill placing unfair burdens on people. This bill is something which some very learned people put together. I did not, nor did the drafters; we are just replicating something that they came up with after much deliberation. I think that it is a great shame that the majority of this Assembly is not going to support the bill today. In so doing, members really are failing in one of the most fundamental duties they have to the territory, that is, to do their best to try to protect the security of our citizens. For whatever reason they are giving, most of it incredibly misguided, they are just missing the point totally.

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