Page 1813 - Week 06 - Thursday, 9 May 2013
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MR CORBELL (Molonglo—Attorney-General, Minister for Police and Emergency Services, Minister for Workplace Safety and Industrial Relations and Minister for the Environment and Sustainable Development) (10.50): I move:
That this bill be agreed to in principle.
I thank my colleague Minister Burch for her assistance during my absence earlier this morning. The Justice and Community Safety Legislation Amendment Bill 2013 (No 3) is part of a series of legislation which makes minor changes to laws within the JACS portfolio. The bill I am introducing today makes minor modifications to a number of acts which will improve the ACT statute book.
The amendments remove unnecessary duplication, ensure the expeditious hearing of applications for orders for forensic procedures in the Magistrates Court and ensure that police officers are able to carry out more than one alcohol screening test where appropriate. This bill achieves these ends by amending the Coroners Act 1997, the Crimes (Forensic Procedures) Act 2000 and the Road Transport (Alcohol and Drugs) Act 1977.
This bill amends section 102 of the Coroners Act to remove the need for the Chief Coroner to prepare annual reports and provide them to me for tabling in the Legislative Assembly. The requirement in section 102 for the Chief Coroner to prepare an annual report and provide the report to me for tabling is unnecessary. As the Chief Coroner is a “public authority” under the Annual Reports (Government Agencies) Act 2004, she is already required to prepare and table annual reports under that act.
The bill will substitute a new section 102 which sets out the particulars which must be included in the Chief Coroner’s annual report and removes unnecessary provisions that duplicate the requirements under the Annual Reports (Government Agencies) Act 2004. This will simplify the process and provisions regarding the Chief Coroner’s annual reports and reduce the resources required for publication. It is proposed the Chief Coroner’s annual report be included in the Justice and Community Safety Directorate annual report. This will ensure consistency with the approach taken with the annual reports for a number of other public authorities, such as the ACT Civil and Administrative Tribunal.
This bill also amends the Crimes (Forensic Procedures) Act to address an operational issue. Section 37(1)(b) states:
A magistrate may, on the application of a police officer, issue a warrant for the arrest of the suspect to bring the suspect before the magistrate for the hearing of the application.
The use of the term “the magistrate” in the section means that the legislation requires the suspect to be brought back before the magistrate who issued the warrant. This is unnecessary, as the magistrate who issues the warrant may have no connection to the suspect or matter concerned and have simply been the magistrate on call for the issue
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