Page 2507 - Week 06 - Thursday, 23 June 2011
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the issue of fitness to plead is raised. In this case the inquiry will be held before the trial judge. If the accused is found fit to plead and goes to a regular trial, the identity of the trial judge would therefore be known and in that circumstance the accused would not have been arraigned before the determination of fitness to plead.
Mr Corbell’s bill fails because it leaves the door wide open to the accused to proceed with his choice of a judge-alone trial or a jury trial even when the identity of the trial judge is known. My amendment closes that door by prohibiting the court from revoking an order for a judge-alone trial after the identity of the trial judge is known.
Finally, I want to comment briefly on the proposed increases to offence penalties for a range of sexual offences, which also forms part of this legislation. These amendments to the Crimes Act were singled out initially because the government wanted to ensure that they remained indictable offences under the definition that the government proposed in its Courts Legislation Amendment Bill which was debated and which the Canberra Liberals significantly amended in May this year.
The only justification in the original explanatory statement for these changes was in relation to the Courts Legislation Amendment Bill, which was passed in May this year. The Canberra Liberals’ amendments at that time removed the need for redefining indictable offences, so the purpose of this amendment in this bill became redundant. But since then, the attorney has decided that it would be a good idea to increase the penalties anyhow.
We are going to hear from Mr Corbell that he is going to leave the changes in because, to quote from an email advice my staff received from his office this week, “the penalties were not adequately reflective of the seriousness of these offences” and that “the revised explanatory statement clarifies that the penalty increase is still required, as the current penalty levels for these offences are out of step with other Australian jurisdictions and are not an adequate reflection of seriousness”.
This is a revelation. We have heard the minister on a number of occasions recently, most recently in response to the Standing Committee on Justice and Community Safety inquiry into murder, saying that it was not necessary to review the penalties for offences in the ACT. But here he is saying that for this class of offences that is in fact not the case. We have heard that Mr Corbell has also agreed that the penalties relating to culpable driving are inadequate and need to be increased. It shows that Mr Corbell is completely out of touch and should have done work on this many years ago.
It is actually satisfying, though, because we have to remember that, fully six years after my former colleague Mr Stefaniak proposed a comprehensive review of criminal offence penalties, the government is finally taking off its blinkers and will start to do the work that is needed—a comprehensive review. But this will not be a comprehensive review. On the contrary, it will be up to the Canberra Liberals to undertake that work, because the attorney has made it clear that he is not interested.
Mr Assistant Speaker, you might be asking yourself: why are we here tonight debating this bill which is so bad? It is such bad law. There is not a member of the legal fraternity that I have spoken to who has a good thing to say for it. The human
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