Page 3721 - Week 09 - Wednesday, 24 August 2011
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It is a longstanding convention in this place that members who introduce legislation, and have carriage of legislation, have the final say over the timing of when it is dealt with—not the government, not the crossbench, not anybody else. So if Mr Corbell wanted to bring legislation in here, within reasonable time, we will deal with it.
In the case here, we have given reasonable notice. On the day that this bill was introduced, I foreshadowed that we proposed to debate it in the August sittings. Mr Corbell had as much warning as any other member of the community. He is working in this area. He has views on the subject, which are published, but he is not prepared to debate this issue.
You have to ask the question why Mr Corbell is not prepared to debate this issue. And it is quite frankly because he has been caught out. He does not want to address these issues because these are issues that should have been dealt with many years ago. In fact, in 2005 and in 2008 the Canberra Liberals introduced legislation in this space and the Labor government voted against it, said it was not necessary. If we had voted for that legislation that was introduced in 2005 we would not be here today attempting to fix up the mess that has been left by ACT Labor. ACT Labor has been in denial about the need to address stricter sentencing in various aspects of the Crimes Act since 2005 and as a result of that denial we are now in a situation where we have to fix this up.
The matters that are being brought forward today are serious issues which have been recommended for action either by a unanimous decision of a standing committee of this place or on the recommendation of one of the most senior statutory officeholders in this town, the DPP. The issue in relation to culpable driving could have been fixed by Mr Corbell and his colleagues in 2005. It was not fixed by Mr Corbell and his colleagues in 2005 and we are now in a situation where we have inappropriate sentences which cannot be appealed effectively by the DPP in this area. And it became incumbent upon me, because the DPP wrote to me on this serious matter, as he wrote to the attorney, to act on it.
Mr Rattenbury does not want to deal with this because he would like to deal with sentencing in a holistic way. And it would be my preference that we deal with sentencing in a holistic way, which is why the Canberra Liberals have been working through these issues for some time and we are almost ready to table a complete review of sentencing. But as things stand at the moment, we found that it was necessary to bring this matter forward because of the representations of the DPP in this area, because I think it would be negligent of us if we did not deal with this matter.
This matter has been on foot for a very long time. Mr Corbell has had every opportunity to deal with this matter. He quite simply does not want to deal with it because, first of all, he is embarrassed by it and, secondly, he wants to be in the situation where he can pass his bill rather than pass the bill from the Canberra Liberals, who have worked harder and have a longer track record of dealing with these matters. He wants to be able to say, “I did it.”
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