Page 864 - Week 03 - Tuesday, 20 March 2012
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that person’s functions under the legislation to require a person to state the person’s name, date of birth and home address, and to produce their drivers licence. As I have made clear when I presented this bill, these new laws have not been developed in response to any problems with religious or cultural communities in the territory. At present, the number of persons driving motor vehicles in the ACT with faces obscured for religious or cultural reasons is very small.
ACT Policing and our road transport officials have not experienced any problems in their dealings with this group of people. The bill makes a special provision for persons with genuine religious or cultural concerns about removing a facially obscuring item in front of persons of the opposite sex. It enables these persons to request that the item be removed only in the presence of a person of the same sex. It also enables them to request that they remove the item in circumstances that afford them reasonable privacy.
The police are required to take reasonable steps to comply with such a request. The legislation does not impose an absolute obligation on police to comply with the request because it is recognised that in some circumstances full or even part compliance with a request may not be safe or reasonably practicable. In these situations, the person who was directed to remove the item will need to comply with that direction, notwithstanding their cultural or religious concerns. However, it should be noted that such a situation will arise only very rarely. ACT Policing is fortunate in having over 170 sworn female members and over 100 unsworn female members.
These laws are directed at the very small minority of drivers and riders who refuse requests from police and authorised persons to remove their motorcycle helmet, a hoodie, a balaclava, large sunglasses or other similar items that make it difficult or impossible to confirm the driver’s or rider’s identity.
Where drivers or riders continue to refuse to remove the item, sometimes it has been necessary to resort to the arrest power and take the person into custody to establish his or her identity. The new direction to remove the obscuring item is a more efficient and less heavy-handed solution.
Other amendments in the bill that are aimed at encouraging safer driving behaviours include the amendments to division 4.2 of the act relating to automatic licence disqualification for culpable driving and other serious driving offences. These amendments tighten the definition of repeat offender to ensure that a person who commits a second or subsequent offence can be subject to the automatic licence disqualification provisions for certain serious driving offences, including culpable driving offences, whether or not the person is convicted or found guilty of the first offence before he or she commits the second or subsequent offence. At present a person will only be regarded as a repeat offender if the second or subsequent offence was committed after the person was convicted or found guilty of the first offence.
Similar amendments to the concept of repeat offender are made to provisions in the Road Transport (Safety and Traffic Management) Act 1999 that permit a court to order the confiscation of a vehicle used in the commission of burnouts or for other serious driving offences.
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