Page 4123 - Week 09 - Thursday, 26 August 2010

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The offence as it is currently structured contains a simple yes/no criteria, and the introduction of reasonable steps would blur this distinction. Importantly, there are defences under the Criminal Code that a licensee can rely on for a strict liability offence. One such example is “intervening conduct or event”, where it is a defence if the conduct in question is the result of an act of another person or non-human activity over which the defendant had no control and against which they could not reasonably be expected to go. The defence is only relevant to offences or physical elements involving strict liability, because the circumstances that make up the defence would negate any fault element. The government will not be supporting this amendment or the other amendments that Mrs Dunne has foreshadowed that have the same intent.

MR RATTENBURY (Molonglo) (6.39): The Greens will not be supporting these amendments either. The amendment would remove the strict liability status from the offence of not keeping an incident register. We do believe that strict liability offences are appropriate where people knowingly enter businesses into regulated industry, and incident registers are part of the regulation of the liquor industry. Licensees are on notice that they need to comply.

In the context of what Mrs Dunne was saying, from a plain English point of view, it strikes me that the offence or the issue is that a licensee needs to keep and maintain a register; it is not that they need to record every single detail in them. I think that is the distinction that we are drawing at perhaps a very simple level. I think that that is the one point of difference in how we are understanding this.

Question put:

That Mrs Dunne’s amendments be agreed to.

The Assembly voted—

Question so resolved in the negative.

Clause 131 agreed to.

Clauses 132 to 150, by leave, taken together and agreed to.

Clause 151.

MRS DUNNE (Ginninderra) (6.44): I move amendment No 20 circulated in my name [see schedule 1 at page 4141].

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