Page 1405 - Week 05 - Tuesday, 9 May 2006
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
Under the commonwealth’s preventative detention regime, a person between the ages of 16 and 18 can be detained for 48 hours. At the legal affairs committee hearing I asked the AFP if they considered they had the power to detain a person in the ACT, take them out of the ACT and hand them over to another police force after 48 hours. They were refreshingly frank in their response. They said that they foresaw no obstacle in doing just that. I hope that these questions did not strike Mr Keelty as insulting.
I suspect that the AFP will completely avoid the ACT’s preventative detention regime if they want to detain someone in the ACT. Why would they bother having to convince a judge of reasonable grounds in the ACT when they can apparently use unreasonable grounds elsewhere? Why would they comply with the requirement that they present evidence adverse to a finding of detention when they can pick and choose what evidence they present in other jurisdictions?
I think it is fanciful that they will decline to detain a person aged between 16 and 18 merely because they cannot do so under ACT legislation. ASIO already has the power to repeatedly detain someone for seven-day periods without charge, and I suspect that preventative detention orders will be used to detain someone incommunicado between bouts of interrogation by ASIO.
Other members of this house say that they object to the notion of 16 to 18-year-olds being detained under these laws, and I do too. But I think it will be far better for a young person to be detained in the ACT, where their family may be granted access to them, where they may have confidential communications with their lawyer and where they may have a realistic judicial review of their detention order after they have had a few days to find out what the case against them is. They will also have the benefit of many other human rights features of the ACT’s legislation.
I actually believe that to support the legislation in its current form will result in 16 to 18-year-olds being placed at an even greater risk of harm. In the absence of ACT legislation, I believe that 16 to 18-year-olds will be renditioned out of the ACT. If the ACT legislation covered them, it is possible that a federal authority would decide to detain them under the ACT’s laws. As I have said, it would be better to increase the chances of their being detained in the ACT if the alternative is for them to be renditioned out of the ACT. As I said in the earlier discussion of a matter of public importance, if they go to New South Wales, I am very concerned that the conditions under which they are kept will be totally out of our control.
I also note Mr Stefaniak’s point that terrorist activities are not limited to those over the age of 18. I agree with him that this is not some game that is only played between adults. If the government truly thinks that these laws are necessary, it is interesting that they have chosen not to make people aged between 16 to 18 years subject to preventative detention orders. Overseas experience shows that young people are just as, or even more, susceptible to violent ideologies than more mature people.
The point I want to make here is that the opposition does not seem to understand that under this legislation it is very likely that people will be preventatively detained who will not be found to have actually had any intent to commit a terrorist act. There is a bit of an
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .