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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 14 Hansard (11 December) . . Page.. 5217 ..

MR STANHOPE (continuing):

important weapon in the prosecution armoury against major crimes of dishonesty. In today's quickly changing world, fraudsters are ever vigilant in devising new schemes to cheat the community and, although their conduct is truly criminal, it often falls between gaps in the general law of fraud.

The legislature cannot realistically hope to anticipate each new fraudulent scheme with specific legislation, particularly given the ingenuity of the modern fraudster. Accordingly, the bill will meet this problem with a modern codified offence that will apply to any person who conspires with another to dishonestly obtain a gain from, or cause loss to, a third person. The modernised offence will also improve the effectiveness of the proposed bribery and related offences by also targeting conspirators who seek to dishonestly influence a public official in the exercise of his or her public duties.

Parts 3.3 and 3.4 also include important offences to protect government revenue and facilitate the proper administration of government. The general dishonesty offences in part 3.3 are based on offences in the Commonwealth Criminal Code and are effectively a codified version of section 29D of the Commonwealth Crimes Act, which was the basis for the almost identical offence in section 8 of the ACT Crimes (Offences against the Government) Act of 1989. It is important to retain offences of this kind because of the interest the whole community has in protecting government revenue from dishonest conduct. Accordingly, the offences will only apply where the dishonest conduct is perpetrated against the territory or a territory entity, and to dishonest dealings to influence a territory official.

For similar reasons, part 3.4 includes offences of providing false and misleading statements, documents and information to government or under ACT government law. They have been modelled on equivalents in the Commonwealth Criminal Code and are included because of their vital importance to the proper administration of government and their effectiveness in protecting the government purse. Their importance is demonstrated by the fact that there are scores of these offences throughout the ACT statute book. However, they are not in a standard form and the maximum penalty varies from act to act. The bill will replace the various other forms of these offences in ACT legislation and will centralise them in the Criminal Code. This will assist in eliminating unnecessary duplication of the ACT statute book and ensure equal treatment for what is essentially the same kind of criminal behaviour.

Parts 3.5 and 3.6 of chapter 3 will include offences of blackmail and forgery and offences related to forgery such as using and possessing a forged document, making and possessing a device to make forged documents, false accounting and false and misleading statements by officers or corporations and other organisations. Again, although the bill offences closely follow existing offences in the Crimes Act, there are a number of important improvements.

In relation to blackmail, the bill clarifies the way in which the offence applies where the victim is a corporation or a government. The offence is also extended in two important respects. First, it will apply to cases where blackmail is used by or against a public official to influence the exercise of his or her public duty, and, secondly, it will also apply to threats that the perpetrator knows the victim is vulnerable to even though the threat may not cause an ordinary person to react.

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