Page 1368 - Week 05 - Tuesday, 13 May 2014
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proposed detention power of up to 30 minutes if they have a reasonable suspicion that the person is under the influence of drugs or alcohol.
I recognise that police need to be able to detain drivers long enough to conduct the normal random roadside tests, as is the current practice. In this case, no reasonable suspicion is needed. However, for the rarer situation where police wish to detain someone for a longer than normal period while they retrieve equipment or perhaps fix faulty equipment, the police should need a reasonable suspicion, otherwise the detention appears to be arbitrary. Mr Corbell is proposing to make an amendment to this effect, which I support, and I thank him for the discussions on this matter.
A third change in the bill creates a new offence of refusing to undertake a roadside screening test for alcohol or drugs. This intention is to ensure the efficacy of the system. The bill also removes an obligation on police to arrange an independent medical examination when a person requests it following a drug or alcohol test. Instead, the obligation is on police to provide the arrested person with access to a phone to contact their preferred medical practitioner to arrange an examination in the same way that access to a phone is given to arrested people to enable them to seek legal representation. The police contracted on-call forensic medical officer is also available.
The last thing I want to flag just in this context is that I have been canvassing the issue of whether the drug driving legislation should be reviewed. I have raised the issue with both Mr Hanson and Mr Corbell. The Greens and the Liberals supported the introduction of drug driving laws which came into effect in May 2011. I think it is necessary that these laws are reviewed at some point. Reviews of roadside drug testing regimes have occurred in most other jurisdictions to review how they are working in practice and have often resulted in tweaks of the legislation or operational elements.
I have formed a view that, given the relatively short period that this legislation has been operating and advice from Policing on the number of tests they have undertaken, it is worth leaving it some more time before that review is undertaken. We want an adequate number of tests to have been undertaken to provide a strong statistical basis for any review and also to allow for operational matters to continue to settle, particularly in light of the reforms being moved through the Assembly today.
On that basis I do not think this is the right time, but I think at the some point in the future we will as an Assembly need to seek that review, or it may be that whoever is the minister for police at the time has that work done. It is something we will want to keep an eye on in light of judicial interpretations of the legislation and practical implementation on the ground. I am happy to support the proposed amendments today, and I thank the Attorney-General for the advice that he has given me in the consideration of this bill.
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) (10.52), in reply: I thank members for their support of this bill today. On almost all measures the ACT is considered to have
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