Page 930 - Week 03 - Thursday, 28 February 2013
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Criminal Law Officers Committee uses an exhaustive list of positions of authority. As the committee said, it is preferable that situations where the usual age of consent does not apply are explicitly defined and that citizens are clearly aware of the defining line between what is lawful and what is unlawful.
I have given this some consideration and I accept the way the definition is framed. The listed relationships do not capture all of the relevant relationships of power—a scout and a scoutmaster for example—and it is easy to think of others. So I agree that a non-exhaustive list will allow flexibility to capture all relevant special care relationships, and in this case it outweighs my other concerns.
I also support the remaining amendments proposed in this bill. These achieve a number of practical measures, and I will touch on some of them briefly.
I support the amendments that clarify and strengthen the provision of victim impact statements to a sentencing court. These are, of course, an important element of the sentencing process, as well as being of great benefit to victims and their families, and their experience with the justice system.
The amendments also strengthen the “damaging property” offence in the Crimes Act to ensure it can be used as a viable alternative to the Criminal Code equivalent, allowing these offences to be more often prosecuted and heard in the Magistrates Court as a summary offence. They also ensure the ACT Magistrates Court can, with the consent of an offender, order an assessment by the Court Alcohol and Drug Assessment Service if an offender has a drug and alcohol misuse issue that is relevant to the sentence to be imposed for an offence, so that this assessment and treatment can be taken into account as a pre-sentencing matter. The Court Alcohol and Drug Assessment Service is a good service, operated by the Health Directorate and staffed by health professionals with extensive experience in drug and alcohol treatment. Again, it is an amendment I agree with.
The amendments also expand the jurisdiction of the Children’s Court to allow it to jointly hear and decide charges against both an adult and a minor where those two people have been charged jointly. I agree with the government that this will avoid the unnecessary running of duplicate hearings; these, of course, put additional pressure on the courts and could cause unnecessary stress to the various people involved, particularly witnesses who may have had to give their evidence more than once in the previous situation.
I would now like to turn to the aspect of the bill that I have the most concern with. On a cursory reading, clause 23 of the bill appears relatively benign. In reality, I believe this is far from the case. It creates a presumption that anyone who has in their possession a controlled precursor—that is, a chemical such as Sudafed that can be manufactured into a controlled drug—and intends to make a controlled drug out of it, intends to sell it. To reiterate that, if I intended to manufacture some Sudafed into a controlled drug for personal use, I would be deemed to have an intention to sell that drug, a much more serious offence. Contrary to common sense and accepted practice, this new presumption will apply only to the bottom end of the range of the offence—that is, to those found with the lowest quantities of controlled precursor.
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