Page 447 - Week 02 - Tuesday, 8 March 2011
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important functions of government is to ensure that members of our community are aware of their rights, responsibilities and obligations under the law. These amendments will clarify existing criminal legislative provisions by ensuring that all serious sexual offending is criminalised, by ensuring that the voices of victims are heard in determining sentences and by making technical amendments to ensure that our criminal laws are precise.
In addition to our laws being readily understood, they must also be an appropriate reflection of community standards. Our laws must reflect our community’s sense of morality, which is best described as our sense of what behaviour is right or wrong. This is one of the driving reasons for the reintroduction of the offence of bestiality. While the offence was not reintroduced in response to the recent media attention on the issue, this attention was a timely reminder of the importance of the offence, and it also demonstrated the community support for such an offence on the ACT statute book.
The reintroduced bestiality offence has been drafted broadly to encompass all sexual activities between a person and an animal. The definition is distinct from most Australian jurisdictions, and the ACT will join South Australia as the only jurisdictions which state that bestiality includes any sexual activity between a person and an animal.
The second amendment in this bill, which is the amendment to the definition of “sexual intercourse” at section 50(b) of the Crimes Act, will result in the definition of “object”, specifying that it includes an animal for the purposes of the sexual offence. The result of this amendment will be that a person who uses an animal to commit a sexual offence against another person will be captured by the most serious category of sexual offences on the ACT’s statute book. Although such offences are rare, it is important that people who commit them do not go unpunished.
The third amendment is to clarify the fault elements of section 60 of the Crimes Act. As members have outlined today, this bill will amend section 60 by removing the fault element of knowledge from subsections (1) and (2) and by including a new subsection (3) to state that either knowledge or recklessness will satisfy the element of recklessness. This clarification will ensure that a person who is charged with an act of indecency offence knows the exact nature of the charges against them and that these offences comply with the ACT’s Criminal Code provisions.
This amendment will ensure that the original intention of the Assembly is given effect. The intention behind the inclusion of both fault elements was to allow for a judge or jury to decide on the facts which fault element was satisfied. By allowing for either element to satisfy recklessness, this intention will prevail.
The fourth amendment to the Crimes (Sentencing) Act 2005 is an important one. It will ensure that a victim impact statement can be given to a court when consideration is being given to recording a conviction against an offender. It will ensure that the court can consider the impact that the offence has had on the person or people most affected by the offender’s conduct by maximising opportunities to use victim impact statements.
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