Page 3302 - Week 11 - Tuesday, 22 September 2015
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Crimes Legislation Amendment Bill 2015
Debate resumed from 13 August 2015, on motion by Mr Corbell:
That this bill be agreed to in principle.
MR HANSON (Molonglo—Leader of the Opposition) (10.30): The Canberra Liberals will be supporting this bill. It does a number of things: it will amend the Bail Act 1992 to remove section 233B of the Customs Act 1901 from item 3 in part 1.5 of schedule 1 and insert 9.1 of the Criminal Code Act 1995 to create a neutral presumption for bail for drug offences where amounts are equal to or greater than the trafficable quantity of a controlled drug.
The bill will amend the Crimes Act 1900 to authorise police officers to take fingerprints, photograph—including video recordings—samples of handwriting and voice recordings of suspects who are children and young people for identification purposes.
The bill will amend the Crimes (Forensic Procedures) Act 2000 to: create a requirement that police officers, when intending to ask an Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander person to consent to a forensic procedure, inform the person that the Aboriginal Legal Service will be notified; provide a mechanism to allow the Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander person to decline the presence of an interview friend or lawyer during a forensic procedure; expand the definition of “incapable person” to include adults who are temporarily incapacitated; and will allow a “close associate” of an incapable person to consent to non-intimate forensic procedures on behalf of that incapable person.
The bill will amend the Crimes (Sentencing) Regulation 2006 to allow a victim impact statement to be made for category 2 offences under the Work Health and Safety Act 2011 where exposure to a risk of death or serious injury or illness has resulted in death or serious injury or illness.
The bill will authorise police officers to issue infringement notices for certain offences under the Magistrates Court (Security Industry Infringement Notices) Regulation 2008 to enforce obligations on licensees, including that security licensees wear their licence number when carrying out certain security activities.
Numerous comments were made by the scrutiny of bills committee in its report No 36. We have taken note of those, and I am satisfied they have been addressed. The Law Society also provided comments with regard to the drafting of this legislation, and I am advised that those comments have also been taken into consideration. I thank the Attorney-General and his staff for the briefing provided to my staff. While noting the issues raised by the scrutiny committee, we will be supporting this legislation.
MR RATTENBURY (Molonglo) (10.33): This bill makes several amendments to crimes legislation, and I will make some comments on a couple of the main changes. Firstly, the bill amends the Bail Act to refer to the relevant piece of commonwealth
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