Page 325 - Week 02 - Tuesday, 7 March 2006
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definitive answer on that. That affects the legislation. The government really needs to look at that, along with other things.
Recommendation 13 proposes that the ACT government consult further with the Australian government Attorney-General’s Department about the consistency of paragraph 18 (k) (vi) with Australian government legislation; otherwise, we may be breaching the law. That is on pages 60 to 61 of our report. The federal department’s view is that that subsection should be omitted because disclosure of information without authorisation about warrants issued and questioning done pursuant to the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation Act is an offence carrying a penalty of five years imprisonment while a warrant is in force. There may be some big problems if our legislation breaches a relevant commonwealth law. Those things need to be cleared up.
I think our suggestions specifically in recommendations 9 and 10 are very important to ensure consistency with the legislation in other states and consistency of the tests the police will have to apply when going before the court for an order. I believe it would be pointless to have legislation that would make it difficult for the police. We might get to a situation where it is almost impossible for them to satisfy the test for an order to be made, which totally defeats the purpose of this legislation. After all, this legislation is aimed at protecting our community from the possibility of quite horrendous attacks, which we have not necessarily seen before, which potentially could involve hundreds, if not thousands, of casualties, so it is very important that we get it right.
I turn now to my additional comments. If we are to have such legislation, it is important that it be as standard as possible across Australia, because terrorism, like other major crime, knows no boundaries. It is important for the ACT to have legislation that is, if not identical, at least very similar to that of the states and the commonwealth. There is a real need here for the standard of proof required to be consistent right across the jurisdictions. A number of people gave evidence before the committee. I accept the rationale in the evidence given by Mick Keelty, the AFP commissioner. He is a world-renowned expert on policing and matters pertaining to terrorism. In this regard he was the most experienced person to appear before the inquiry, and I give due weight to his evidence. In his evidence on 31 January this year Mr Keelty said:
The ACT is of particular importance to the AFP because it not only houses the seat of government, some 90 diplomatic missions and some 1,000 staff attached to those missions across the Australian Capital Territory but is policed by the AFP in a community policing role, complementing the role that the AFP performs nationally and internationally. In responding to terrorism, we are focusing on minimising the risk to the community … we are trying to narrow the space between when we can intervene to prevent an attack occurring and the opportunity for terrorists to launch such an attack. These are powers that we will use judiciously and cautiously to protect the community.
He went on to say that the AFP had had the commonwealth legislation powers for over a month, that ASIO had had detention powers for over 12 months and that there had been little or no outcry from anyone in the community about abuse of power. He also said that he and his colleagues had fears about whether the ACT’s proposed bill was sufficient. He stated in his submission that the police had concerns about provisions in the bill that may impede the interoperability between the ACT policing element of the AFP and the rest of
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