Page 2599 - Week 07 - Thursday, 1 August 2019
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prosecutors and our courts to ensure that they have the tools they need to uncover and prosecute organised crime.
The bill takes two important measures to support and protect the rights of family violence victims. Firstly, the bill restores the original intended meanings of “choke”, “strangle” and “suffocate” under the Crimes Act 1900. These meanings were recently interpreted narrowly in the case of R v Green to require proof that the victim’s breathing had stopped. Medical evidence clearly shows that life-threatening complications can flow from choking, strangulation and suffocation even when breath is not completely stopped. In a family violence context, non-fatal strangulation is very strongly associated with later attempted or completed homicide. These amendments will restore the intention of the terms as originally enacted to ensure that perpetrators of family and personal violence do not escape justice.
I specifically note the concerns that have been raised by the Law Society and echoed by the opposition about this change. It is important that core legal principles like retrospectivity of legislation are carefully considered, and I welcome their constructive engagement. In this case it is the government’s view that we are responding to an unanticipated technical interpretation, and that no new crime is being created. It was always the intention of the Assembly to criminalise the behaviour that we are describing. Today’s amendments will mean that people who commit this heinous act of domestic violence are held accountable, as the Assembly has always intended.
Secondly, the bill allows police officers at or above the rank of sergeant to take affidavits of service from other police officers in family and personal violence proceedings. This is in response to the procedural difficulty associated with finding a suitably qualified person before whom an affidavit of service can be sworn or affirmed. This will assist in removing procedural delays and reducing trauma for family and personal violence proceedings.
The bill makes other important amendments to ensure the efficient and fair operation of the ACT justice system. The bill provides that the sale and consumption of low-THC hemp seeds will not be subject to drug-related offences. The decriminalisation of the sale and consumption of low-THC hemp seeds as food recognises that they are a harmless and nutritious food. The amendment reflects the 2017 decision by the Australian and New Zealand Ministerial Forum on Food Regulation to amend the Australia New Zealand Food Standards Code to allow the sale of low-THC hemp seeds as food.
A consequential amendment is made to the Road Transport (Alcohol and Drugs) Act 1977 to remove the offence of mistake of fact from being pursued based on a claim that the presence of THC in a person’s oral fluid or blood resulted from the consumption of a cannabis food product. Hemp foods contain no or very low levels of THC, the psychoactive chemical compound normally found in cannabis. Therefore, if THC is found in an oral fluid or blood test, it will not be because the person has consumed a cannabis food product.
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