Page 4065 - Week 13 - Thursday, 31 October 2013
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Title read by Clerk.
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) (10.25): I move:
That this bill be agreed to in principle.
I am pleased to present the Crimes Legislation Amendment Bill 2013. The bill will address a number of criminal justice legislation issues that have arisen in the ACT and amend laws to make important improvements to the criminal justice system. I am progressing amendments in this bill to ensure that prosecutions for particular historic sexual offences can be brought. Currently, prosecutions for certain offences that occurred in the past cannot be commenced. This is a result of limitation periods in the current law that came into force in 1951 and 1976 and provided that prosecution had to be commenced within 12 months of the offence being committed. Offences affected by the limitation period include some sexual offences against children. Clearly these circumstances are unacceptable.
There is no present justification for the existence of the statutory bars created by these laws. Provisions in this bill will repeal the limitation periods so that these sexual offences, where appropriate, can be prosecuted. The offences in question are: carnally knowing a girl between 10 and 16, attempt to carnally know a girl between 10 and 16, indecent assault of a girl under 16, buggery, attempt to commit bugger, and indecent assault of a male.
These types of offences are plainly serious and are likely to result in significant and ongoing pain and anguish for victims long after the physical offences are committed. Sexual offences have far-reaching impacts, affecting not only survivors themselves but their families and others close to them into the future. We as an Assembly need to take these offences very seriously and need to ensure that such serious offences are capable of being prosecuted whether they occurred last week or decades ago.
The gravity with which our society rightly regards these types of offences is reflected in the establishment of a royal commission into institutional responses to allegations of child sexual abuse, which was announced in November last year. This amendment will afford victims of historic sexual offences the opportunity to have a prosecution brought against the alleged offender, providing victims with access to the justice system that has been previously denied to them.
It is particularly important to provide this opportunity to historic sexual offence victims as it is well documented that sexual assault and abuse victims are likely to delay reporting of the crime for a number of reasons and would therefore not have been likely to report the offence within the 12-month limitation period.
Existing safeguards in both the common and statute law, together with amendments provided in this bill, will ensure that the right of defendants to a fair trial and rights in criminal proceedings will not be unduly limited. The amendment will have the effect
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