Page 4104 - Week 13 - Tuesday, 15 November 2005
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prompt attention is given to ensuring maximisation of opportunities for rehabilitation, core conditions have been introduced, and offender management reorganised to provide a better response.
I foreshadow a number of government amendments for the detail stage of the bill’s debate. Most of the amendments I foreshadow are upon advice from the Sentence Administration Board. To ensure that the provision for special parole application is not abused, I will move an amendment that enables regulations to further qualify eligibility to apply for special parole. In relation to the supervision of periodic detention, parole and release on licence, I will move amendments to clarify that permission for changes in an offender’s contact details should be given prior to any change rather than after the change.
An amendment to the bill also will be proposed to make it mandatory for corrections officers to report all breaches of sentencing orders. An amendment will be moved to require the Sentence Administration Board to cancel periodic detention if an officer on periodic detention fails to perform periodic detention twice or more. A provision to this effect was in the exposure draft but was unintentionally drafted out of the final bill.
On advice from the Supreme Court, an amendment will be made to enable the Supreme Court to issue a summons if that court is the sentencing court supervising a good behaviour order. I will also move amendments to ensure that the Sentence Administration Board can interview offenders in the context of supervising sentences where no breach is alleged; to clarify Sentence Administration Board members’ requirements to attend meetings; to change the Sentence Administration Board’s authority to remand in its own right from four days to 14 days maximum; and to clarify who is responsible for making audio records of the Sentence Administration Board’s hearings.
Mr Speaker, the two government bills the Assembly is debating today have been three years in the making. I would like to express my thanks to everybody in the criminal justice system and the community for their comments and criticism of the bills. The bills incorporate the many suggestions made by stakeholders and reflect the policy advocated by the government on the project. In particular, I thank the Chief Justice and the Chief Magistrate for enabling officers of my department to benefit from their thoughts and analysis and those of the justices and magistrates. I commend this bill to the Assembly.
Question resolved in the affirmative.
Bill agreed to in principle.
Detail stage
Clauses 1 to 9, by leave, taken together and agreed to.
Clause 10.
MR STEFANIAK (Ginninderra) (11.52): I move amendment No 1 circulated in my name [see schedule 1 at page 4176].
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