Page 5194 - Week 12 - Thursday, 27 October 2011
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that certainly judges in Tasmania were getting fairly close when it came to meeting the broad spectrum of community views. With about half and half on each side, it suggests that the judges are coming down in a fairly accurate place in terms of community expectations.
Members will recall that the ACT Greens have suggested that research of this type should be performed in the territory because it would provide incredibly useful evidence on this question of community views. I think the Tasmanian example provides us with some guidance but, of course, we do not want to rely entirely on the Tasmanian outcome. I think, particularly as we increase the number of jury trials in the ACT, that there is scope to undertake this kind of research. It is research that takes a bit of time but the sooner we start it, the better off we will be in terms of actually getting to a point of achieving a substantive number of instances which we can use to form a basis for results.
The second flaw that the Greens in particular are concerned with in this bill is that JACS was not asked to look at what impact the bill would have. I was particularly disappointed with the briefing we had from the directorate. I thank the directorate for the briefing. I always find them very helpful and informative. However, when I asked the directorate whether they had looked into what actual impact they thought the new penalties would have, I was somewhat taken aback to be told that the minister had not asked for this work to be performed.
All that the review was asked to look into was a numerical comparison across jurisdictions rather than going the next step and looking at what actual impact the sentences would have. This seems to me a most unfortunate oversight in the preparation of the legislation.
The third area of particular concern for us is the treatment of aggravated offences. Mrs Dunne has spoken about this already but certainly the Greens believe the bill treats aggravated offences in an ad hoc manner and we are quite concerned about that. An aggravated offence in the ACT is one where the victim was a pregnant mother whose unborn child is harmed because of the commission of a crime. Currently in the ACT, there are eight crimes which have an aggravated version. In developing this bill the government have made a policy decision to abandon aggravated offences for four out of the eight crimes to which it applies.
This is a relatively important policy decision that seems to have arisen as a by-product of this bill. It does not appear that the government set out with the original intent to reform aggravated offences but has ended up proposing it anyway. The Greens’ position is that the question of whether the ACT should retain aggravated offences should be considered comprehensively rather than taking the ad hoc approach suggested in this bill and deleting half of the aggravated offences while at the same time retaining the other half. If we are going to deal with aggravated offences, let us have a proper policy discussion and not deal with it in this sort of after-thought kind of way.
The fourth area of particular concern for us, and I guess the fourth flaw we see in the bill, is one that I have spoken about publicly. That is in relation to the JACS Guide to
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