Page 4234 - Week 11 - Thursday, 17 Sept 2009
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There are a range of important issues thrown up by this bill and I will make some comments on those. The Attorney-General has made it clear that the law of entrapment is not altered by this bill and that is an important point for him to have clarified. We accept that the provisions of this bill do not alter entrapment. However, there are a range of other issues that have not been so clearly and definitively covered, and I raise them now for the sake of completeness.
Firstly, the Freedom of Information Act and the Territory Records Act will not apply to the proposed assumed identities act. The stated rationale for that position is the need to protect police officers and informants operating under an assumed identity from effectively being exposed by an FOI application. That is an understandable motivation and one that the Greens support.
What is less clear, however, is why the existing exemptions available under the FOI Act are not adequate to cover off on this need to protect police officers and informants. In particular, section 37 of the FOI Act exempts documents that would disclose the identity of a confidential source or endanger the life or safety of any person. The Greens do not say that the express exclusion of the FOI Act is unwarranted. The point I make is that the information provided in support of this bill does not make clear why the FOI needs to be expressly excluded beyond the existing exclusions of the FOI Act.
Another issue not dealt with in any depth in the bill or its supporting information is civilian use of assumed identities. Police officers acting under assumed identities are one thing to contemplate but extending the use of assumed identities to civilians raises another range of issues. Of course, the intent is to allow for informants to act under assumed identities and, again, that is an understandable tactic that should be available in the fight against serious crime.
The point I make is that this use of assumed identities is not given much discussion at all in the explanatory statement. You have to go to the papers produced by the joint working group of the Standing Committee of Attorneys-General to be exposed to any discussion or analysis on the use of civilians. What is found there in that joint working group documentation is a discussion of the importance of the police supervision of civilians who have been issued with assumed identities. The position that was taken there was that a certain minimum rank of supervising police officer should be set in the legislation.
This bill does set that appropriate supervision regime and requires that such a police officer be ranking sergeant and above, or in the case of the Australian Crimes Commission, senior investigator and above. That is a responsible provision in the bill that will ensure that civilians operating under assumed identities are appropriately supervised to ensure they are acting in accordance with the conditions of their assumed identity. This issue of supervision was not given any analysis in the supporting material and I think that is a shame for those perhaps looking back later or seeking to interpret provisions of the legislation.
Mrs Dunne flagged this morning a letter she received from Civil Liberties Australia. We also received a similar letter. It raised specific concerns about the operation of the
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