Page 1011 - Week 04 - Tuesday, 2 May 2006
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Title read by Clerk.
MR CORBELL (Molonglo—Attorney-General, Minister for Police and Emergency Services and Minister for Planning) (10.59): I move:
That this bill be agreed to in principle.
Today I have introduced the Sentencing Legislation Amendment Bill 2006. Last year, the government introduced the Crimes (Sentencing) Bill and the Crimes (Sentence Administration) Bill. Those bills were subsequently enacted by the Assembly in November last year. I would also like to foreshadow this morning that the government will also introduce the Corrections Management Bill 2006 in the spring sittings, which will complete the suite of new sentencing legislation for the territory. Such is the sheer scope of the reform these acts replace that in fact they replace 12 pieces of existing legislation and affect no fewer than 39 other pieces of legislation.
Updating the territory’s statute books to make way for the new sentencing laws is no mean feat. This bill provides the consequential amendments for the Crimes (Sentencing) Act 2005 and the Crimes (Sentence Administration) Act 2005, as well as the foreshadowed Corrections Management Bill. This bill repeals old sentencing and sentence administration laws and updates references in the ACT statute book to the new laws. The bill also ensures that the concepts and methods used in the Crimes (Sentencing) Act 2005 and the Crimes (Sentence Administration) Act 2005 are applied across the statute book.
Last year, when the Chief Minister introduced the new sentencing bill he made the point that it is the duty of governments and legislatures to set down a coherent framework for sentencing options and procedures. This bill, in conjunction with the Corrections Management Bill 2006, will enable the breadth of sentencing and custody laws to be read together and to work together. The government has met its commitment to consolidate and improve sentencing law with these bills. I look forward to the commencement of the new laws on 2 June this year.
As I have already mentioned, the Crimes (Sentencing) Act 2005 and the Crimes (Sentence Administration) Act 2005 were drafted to work in union with the government’s Corrections Management Bill. To remove any doubt while the Assembly considers and debates the Corrections Management Bill, the Sentencing Legislation Amendment Bill provides transitional arrangements to enable the existing custodial laws to apply until the Corrections Management Bill has been passed and commenced. The Sentencing Legislation Amendment Bill 2006 does not introduce any new policy. The policy of the sentencing acts were part of the Assembly’s debate during the November sittings last year, and I thank members for their contributions to that debate.
As members would know, the government believes that allowing prisoners to vote in ACT elections contributes to rehabilitation, rather than deters rehabilitation. Last year the government was expecting that it would have to move amendments that would enable ACT prisoners to vote in ACT elections, despite commonwealth amendments to the contrary. I am pleased to say that, upon advice from the ACT electoral commissioner, no amendments are deemed necessary. I am advised that the structure of the
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