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

Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 14 Hansard (9 December) . . Page.. 4980 ..

MR STANHOPE (continuing):

The government also decided that a policy of a neutral presumption towards bail should also apply to people charged with an offence involving violence, or threatened violence, if the accused person was found guilty of one of the following offences within 10 years prior to the current charge: threat to kill, threat to inflict grievous bodily harm, stalking, and contravention of a protection order. By specifically identifying the offences which will hold a neutral presumption towards bail, we avoid the muddle that we believe Mr Stefaniak got himself into during the October sitting.

Mr Stefaniak introduced a bill which raised just one issue in the bail system. He tried to describe the offences he wished to designate as holding a presumption against bail. In this regard he tried to copy the commission's recommendations and tack on definitions from the Crimes Act, but the method was flawed because describing the offences abstractly is no substitute for being specific.

Just about anyone charged with an offence described by Mr Stefaniak's bill would have been put into remand. This bill would have sucked the life out of the judiciary's discretion. The government's policy of creating a category of neutral presumption for specific criminal offences will give the judiciary greater discretion to consider the facts and nuances of serious cases without the impediment of a statutory bias.

The offence of murder is our community's most important criminal law. Murder is the ultimate betrayal of trust in our community. A person who has committed murder has taken a step beyond the boundaries of what it means to be human. The primal trust that we will not kill each other is a fundamental precondition of human society. The sanction for murder holds the greatest severity in our criminal justice system, and rightly so.

The government's policy is that a presumption against bail should apply to the charge of murder and the ancillary offences of murder, such as attempted murder, conspiracy to murder and accessory to murder. This approach revisits the common law position on bail for murder charges, namely, that bail was not granted to those charged with murder unless exceptional circumstances applied.

Mr Speaker, drug dealing is a mainstay of organised crime in our country. Drugs are a source of big money for organised crime and perpetuate other layers of crime, from murder to petty theft. The government has taken important steps this year to improve the territory's ability to dismantle organised crime. For example, we enacted the Confiscation of Criminal Assets Act 2003 and have it up and running in order to investigate and seize the funds procured through drug-related crime.

Next year the government aims to produce a modernised set of drug offences as part of the ongoing development of a national model criminal code. Once drug trafficking offences are modernised, the government intends to introduce a presumption against bail for the foreshadowed new offences that target organised crime. Having specified the offences which will hold a neutral presumption towards bail and the offences which will hold a presumption against granting bail, it is the government's policy that all other offences before authorised officers or the courts will retain a presumption for bail.

In relation to minor offences, the government agrees with the commission's view that courts and authorised officers need the greatest flexibility to make appropriate orders when faced with an enormous diversity of circumstance. At present, the Bail Act 1992

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