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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 03 Hansard (Tuesday, 9 March 2004) . . Page.. 927 ..

MR CORBELL (Minister for Health and Minister for Planning) (5.00): Mr Speaker, I move amendment No 1 circulated in my name [see schedule 6 at page 939]. I table a supplementary explanatory statement to the amendment.

Mr Speaker, clause 135 (1) creates an offence in relation to a person obstructing, hindering, intimidating or resisting a building inspector in certain circumstances. The offence is strict liability and an imprisonment penalty was inadvertently included. This amendment removes the imprisonment penalty, with the maximum financial penalty of 50 penalty units remaining.

MS DUNDAS (5.01): I want to speak briefly to what the minister has just put forward. From what the minister has said, it does appear that the government has accepted the general principle that strict liability offences should not have custodial sentences attached. If this is so, I applaud the decision and note that the government has withdrawn strict liability offences in a number of bills. However, it is of concern that custodial sentences keep finding their way into the legislation.

The minister indicated that this amendment was a drafting oversight. However, sentencing people to imprisonment is a pretty serious oversight and I think the government has to be more careful when drafting legislation to avoid these types of problems. I note that there are still pieces of legislation, such as the Security Industry Act and the Charitable Collections Act, that have custodial sentences for strict liability offences. If the government policy really is that there should not be custodial sentences for strict liability offences then I urge it to table legislation to remove these penalties from previous pieces of legislation as well as to make sure that custodial sentences do not slip into any new bills.

MS DUNNE (5.03): I rise to almost exactly echo everything that Ms Dundas has said. It is a concern that we still see creeping into legislation custodial sentences for strict liability offences. There is one in the Building Bill and there are several in the construction industry bill that we will be debating at a later time. I think this is most regrettable. It is time we got over the “Oops, we made a mistake again” excuse. Perhaps it is time that the government sent out a directive to its drafters that in future this Assembly will not tolerate custodial sentences for strict liability offences.

MS TUCKER (5.04): The Greens will also be supporting the removal of custodial sentences in this instance.

Amendment agreed to.

Clause 135, as amended, agreed to.

Clauses 136 to 142, by leave, taken together and agreed to.

Proposed new clause 142A.

MS TUCKER (5.04): I move revised amendment No 2 circulated in my name [see schedule 4 at page 937]. This amendment, which seeks to insert new clause 142A, allows the minister to make sustainability guidelines and prevents builders from using

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