Page 2779 - Week 07 - Wednesday, 29 June 2011
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retrospective effect. I have never, in my time in this place, seen a bill proposed that gives retrospective effect to criminal charges, to criminal offences. The government is deeply concerned about the precedent that is being established today which attempts to create offences with significant penalties and to apply them retrospectively.
Let us just be very clear about that, Mr Speaker. What this bill proposes today is that an action that was taken from the date that this bill was introduced into this place, that is lawful on the day it occurred, would become unlawful and subject to a criminal charge if this bill is passed. That is the proposal today, and that is abhorrent. How can the Greens stand up today and argue that there is any fairness, that there is any justice, that there is any compliance with human rights principles, in creating criminal offences that have retrospective effect?
Let us be clear about what these offences are. The offence in proposed section 216B is triggered if a party receives one or more gifts from a single person or entity of more than $50,000. The penalty for this proposed offence is substantial. Depending on the definition of “receive”, it may be possible that this offence could lead to a party being caught by this offence unwittingly, simply by being given an amount that led to this section being contravened. The proposed penalty is $60,000.
But there are some real questions about how this offence provision will operate. What will happen when a person donates a baseball card to a political party and that card is, for example, eventually sold at an auction for $60,000? Is this an offence under section 216A or section 216B, or is it both? We have some real and serious questions about how these provisions will operate.
Let us turn again to the issue of retrospective effect. Section 25 of the Human Rights Act is very clear on the issue of retrospective offence provisions. It says:
No-one may be held guilty of a criminal offence because of conduct that was not a criminal offence under Territory law when it was engaged in.
That is a very clear description about the prohibition on retrospective criminal offences in this legislation under the Human Rights Act.
Given the significance of it, given the demands that we have seen from the Greens that bills can only be presented in this place by the government when there has been detailed human rights analysis—in fact the Greens, as you know, Mr Speaker, have gone as far as to argue that, for every government bill, in the explanatory statement in every government bill, there should be a detailed analysis of the rights engaged under the Human Rights Act.
In fact the Greens felt that it was so important that they put into the parliamentary agreement with the Labor government that there should be detailed explanation of and justification for the engagement of rights under the Human Rights Act. Yet today they are saying they are going to support a bill in principle that engages one of the most fundamental rights under the Human Rights Act.
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