Page 2784 - Week 07 - Wednesday, 29 June 2011
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Ms Hunter’s speech goes to some of the points that the attorney has made. In principle, we understand, the Greens support caps. I think the Attorney-General has outlined some of the issues of concern around implementing caps and how they may not actually provide the restrictions that the Greens support. Ms Hunter then goes on to say, “There are a whole range of issues that we need to deal with in terms of the specifics of this bill.” We could not agree more. The attorney’s arguments go to all of those points.
The Greens are prepared to vote in principle for a bill that will, from the sound of Ms Hunter’s comments, be seriously amended in the detail stage. That is the feeling I get from the Greens’ discussion in the in-principle stage: “We agree with the general theme of Mr Smyth’s bill. We do not know if it will work; we do not understand how it will work. And there are all these questions that the committee is looking at which will help define and refine our position on this.”
I do find it extraordinary that, at the first opportunity Mr Smyth has, in presenting legislation, he fails to provide an explanatory statement. That is something in relation to which members on the other side come in here and criticise the government, but it is usually around the content of the explanatory statement; we do not usually get to the fact that there is no explanatory statement at all.
The issues about criminal retrospectivity are serious. The Assembly needs to have its eyes wide open about the precedent we are setting here today. Let us just think for a moment about potentially applying the provisions that Mr Smyth has in his bill perhaps to grants programs that have been implemented by this Assembly for money appropriated. Let us for a moment think about what would happen if we introduced legislation to retrospectively criminalise the activities of individuals or organisations that applied for something in a legal project, something that was legal on the day that that activity occurred, but where this Assembly can then come in and sweep through laws that would make that activity criminal. Let us just have a moment, because that is the precedent that this Assembly is setting here today—without any explanatory statement, without a Human Rights Act compatibility statement, without going into any of the details about why it is right to infringe those rights and some explanation around that. That is the standard that applies to the government. It clearly does not apply to the Liberals when they are seeking to legislate on rumour and innuendo. That is the precedent that is being set today, and that is the precedent that the Greens are supporting.
The government will find it very hard to accept arguments that are being put forward by the Greens party—around human rights, around scrutiny, and around appropriate information being tabled with legislation to allow genuine engagement and debate to occur—if they agree for this bill to be agreed to in principle today. I think those arguments will be very difficult to make in the future.
This government accepts that the numbers in this place may see this bill pass the in-principle stage today, even though it might be completely amended in the detail stage. We accept that. But based on the speech that Ms Hunter has given today and the work that is being undertaken by the Standing Committee on Justice and Community Safety,
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