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

Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 03 Hansard (Thursday, 11 March 2004) . . Page.. 1158 ..

As I noted during the debate on the Dangerous Substances Bill, these clauses represent a significant diminution of the requirement to prove that a person possessed a fault element for a crime for which they can be convicted. I continue to find this extremely troubling. I am aware that the intention is to ensure that people cannot divest themselves of responsibility by employing others to commit crimes for them. But I do think it needs to be more carefully examined. On the other hand, we continue to have debates about the importance of fault elements and we have considered this issue before in the context of strict liability offences. So I continue to be concerned by these provisions and will keep watching carefully to see if they are continually inserted into other pieces of legislation.

Finally, I wish to note that there is no urgency in implementing the criminal code. I note that other states have slowed their consideration of new chapters, so there is no need for us to charge ahead if the rest of the country is not close behind. If all jurisdictions do not implement the code, its usefulness here in the ACT is diminished. I understand that the government’s desire to debate this bill quickly came about because of the urgency of the laws and the fact that new legislation was being drafted that depended upon it. I am not convinced that this is a great reason to push through this bill. It could be argued that it is a questionable practice to assume that a bill will pass the Assembly and hence draft other legislation that depends on that process.

There are a number of concerns about the legislation we are debating tonight. I understand that it does have the support of the government and the opposition, but we are not happy that the legislation is going to go through. We would have liked more time to work through the issues, but we have raised these issues here in the debate and hopefully they will be considered in the future. I reiterate our concern that there is no need to rush this legislation through.

MS TUCKER (9.53): I will speak very briefly on the Criminal Code (Theft, Fraud, Bribery and Related Offences) Amendment Bill 2003 because I have not had the chance to go through this legislation in the way that I would have liked. I sought some advice from the Law Society but they were not able to offer any assistance. I have also had a person off sick in my office. Clearly, we have the numbers to pass the legislation.

I will make a couple of comments on the whole process of the criminal code project. It is often put that a particular proposal for the ACT echoes a provision that the Commonwealth has adopted, and that seemed to be a good thing. Simply because something is being done by the Commonwealth or by other jurisdictions in Australia is not in itself proof that it is a desirable course of action. As legislators we must accept responsibility for all the laws we pass. It is conceivable that we do take a different position on some matters of law.

A general comment I would like to make is that the criminal code project has seen some shift in penalties. To some extent the variety of offences has been compressed, leading to less graduation of seriousness in several offences. We have also seen an increase in the proportion of strict liability offences, so I do find that a closer scrutiny of more arcane aspects of this project is desirable in this instance. However, I simply say that we have not done the work in the detail that we would have liked.

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