Page 2763 - Week 07 - Wednesday, 6 June 2012
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against police. We are open to consider any initiative or law reform that will reduce violence against officers who act in the public interest and, unfortunately, have to put themselves in dangerous situations.
However, what we will not support are initiatives that play into a simplistic approach to law and order. Promising to lock up offenders for longer and longer in prison after they commit an offence may deliver a headline in the Canberra Times, but it will not deliver any greater protection for police officers. At worst, this bill is an empty gesture to police because it promises to better protect police but does nothing to actually deliver on that promise.
One lawyer put it very succinctly when he appeared before the justice and community safety committee inquiry into this bill. He said:
It is just a nonsense. It is a bit of window-dressing that does not achieve anything that cannot be and is not achieved by the current legislation.
The Chief Police Officer also had his doubts about the deterrent effect that this bill would have. He told the committee:
I do not believe that increased penalties, particularly in the range of those proposed, would act as a deterrent effect on offenders assaulting police. I say that because in the vast majority of cases those offences are committed by people in a very spontaneous and impulsive manner. Quite often those people are affected by alcohol, drugs or some emotional disposition which was existent prior to police turning up at the scene.
I could go on with more of the evidence provided to the recent committee in hearings, both orally and in submissions. There are some very telling remarks made by people who attended and gave evidence. I will just conclude with one final comment which reads:
It is the tough on crime type of thing that potentially is able to get votes. It is the emperor’s new clothes. There is nothing to it. It does not achieve anything, other than lead to possible injustice, complication and more work for various of us here—
at which point he is referring to the lawyers giving evidence—
as we try to deal with what would be an unjust situation that is unnecessary.
The committee brought all the information together in quite a succinct summary and concluded that the measure proposed in this bill was unlikely to deter assaults on police and that the Assembly should, therefore, not support it. The bill, unfortunately, appears to fail at the very first hurdle because it will not achieve its stated aim of reducing assaults against police. The Greens will be accepting the advice of the committee and not supporting the bill.
Even if there had been evidence provided to the committee that the bill would have some effect on reducing assaults against police, I think there is a second major issue
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