Page 2234 - Week 06 - Wednesday, 9 May 2012
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admission and his tabling statement yesterday, indicates that there are more changes afoot, and we do not have the basic, quantitative data about how many people are on bail, how many people are remanded in custody and are finally acquitted, how many people breach their bail, how often, how many people reoffend when they are on bail.
These are really simple, fundamental issues that go to the heart of whether the system works properly and whether the people of the ACT are safe. This is a simple, safety issue. One of the issues in whether or not someone gets bail is whether they are a risk to the community. This minister cannot tell us. This is a sorry indictment of this minster and his tenure as Attorney-General over six years. Mr Rattenbury bemoans the fact that we do not have a robust approach but he has done nothing in his amendment to ensure that we have a robust approach.
In addition to the failure to provide the community with data, the minister has amended this motion out of all recognition by saying that it calls upon him to advise the Assembly by 5 June how the government monitors and enforces instances of noncompliance with the Bail Act. Quite frankly, if someone who has been Attorney-General for six years could not stand up in this place today and do that off the top of his head, he is a failure as a minister. It is a disgrace that one of the principal elements of the criminal justice system is not something that he is sufficiently familiar with that he could not answer that question off the cuff today.
Why does the Assembly have to wait until 5 June for the minister to advise the Assembly on the most fundamental administration of this? It shows yet again that this minister is not across his brief. He is not across his brief. On a number of occasions you have a discussion with him and he cannot answer fundamental questions. He has to refer constantly to his officials to answer fundamental questions. Here is a stark example.
He should be embarrassed to move an amendment like this because what he is doing here today is saying, “I do not know how the bail system operates, and I have to take a month to take advice.” If he did not know the answer to that question already, he should have been sitting down with his officials this morning and having a briefing on it, because, by his own admission, he is so under-briefed that he could not come in here today and tell us this. He has to give himself a month’s notice to tell the Assembly how he administers his Bail Act.
This is a disgrace. It is an absolute shame. He is a dysfunctional minister who presides over a criminal justice system that is not serving the people of the ACT. And everything that has been said by this attorney today and supported by the Greens shows that they do not care whether the people of the ACT are safe and whether the criminal justice system in the ACT is ensuring that they are safe. This is a disgrace and the Canberra Liberals will not be supporting the government’s amendment.
Mr Rattenbury’s amendment agreed to.
Question put:
That Mr Corbell’s amendment, as amended, be agreed to.
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