Page 4471 - Week 14 - Thursday, 28 November 2013
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nearer the time of the offence being committed. It does engage matters of human rights. It might even, as the scrutiny committee noted, establish new but retrospective criminal offences to the extent that the limitation has been removed.
However, I do accept that engagement of human rights is reasonable and proportionate. It does allow victims perhaps to close a chapter in their lives that doubtless would have caused them considerable emotional and other mental health problems, sometimes for decades. They, as much as offenders, if not more, are entitled to human rights.
Two amendments are also made to the Crimes (Forensic Procedures) Act 2000. The first removes the requirement for a practitioner conducting an intimate forensic procedure to be of the same sex as the suspect, serious offender or volunteer on whom the procedure is to be conducted. It also gives the offender the opportunity to refuse, in which case a practitioner of the same sex must perform the procedure. There are special, but not significantly different, provisions when the procedure is to be performed on a child or young person.
I understand the rationale for this change is that most offenders are male but most practitioners are female. This creates obvious difficulties when the legislation requires the practitioner and the subject to be of the same sex. Sometimes this can be made more complex when the integrity of the evidence depends on quick action in performing a forensic procedure.
The second amendment to the Crimes (Forensic Procedures) Act 2000 is to give courts and police power to secure the physical attendance of a serious offender before a court for a forensic procedure application hearing. This will apply whether the offender is in custody or not.
Such an application would contemplate a forensic procedure to be employed to obtain evidence relevant to other unsolved crimes. The evidence information would be entered on the national criminal investigation DNA database. In turn, this would enable law enforcement agencies in other jurisdictions to use the information in the investigation of other crimes. I understand this amendment also brings the ACT into line with commonwealth law.
This bill also amends the Drugs of Dependence Act 1989 to increase from 25 grams to 50 grams the maximum quantity of cannabis that can trigger the issue by police of a simple cannabis offence notice instead of laying criminal charges. The explanatory statement notes that the most common purchase is one ounce, which is 28.3 grams, so the amendment will capture most small quantity purchases.
On one hand this amendment would free up police and the courts. On the other hand I do have some concerns with this amendment. The explanatory statement claims that this amendment would “improve consistency with offence notice regimes in other states and territories”. However, on the basis of a jurisdictional comparative table provided to me through the attorney’s office—and I thank his office for doing that—it would appear that this amendment does not improve consistency.
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