Page 3640 - Week 12 - Wednesday, 1 November 2023
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years ago about doing so. It will be a Metro. He has certainly delivered on his commitment to ensure that it will be a lower-price fuel station. We know that Metro does offer cheaper prices, and that will be adding to the options that Canberrans have in the ACT. I really commend them for their tenacity in bringing that service to Canberrans, after what has been a very long journey.
Madam Speaker, with that, I say that the FuelCheck app, and the capacity to save money at the pump, is literally in Canberrans’ hands. I table the following papers:
FuelCheck Post-Implementation Review—Summary Report, dated August 2023.
Fuel price monitoring—Assembly resolution of 31 May 2023—Government response—Ministerial statement, 1 November 2023.
I move:
That the Assembly take note of the ministerial statement.
Question resolved in the affirmative.
Justice (Age of Criminal Responsibility) Legislation Amendment Bill 2023
Debate resumed from 9 May 2023, on motion by Mr Rattenbury:
That this bill be agreed to in principle.
MR CAIN (Ginninderra) (10.48): As members would be aware, the Justice (Age of Criminal Responsibility) Legislation Amendment Bill aims to raise the minimum age of criminal responsibility—and I will refer to that as MACR for brevity—to 14 years, with carve-outs for children aged 12 or 13 convicted of serious crimes such as murder or sexual assault. Across Australian states and territories, the MACR is 10 years old, except in the Northern Territory, which raised the age to 12 on 1 August this year.
As members would be aware, the United Nations petitioned Australia in 2019 to raise the MACR to 14. ACT Labor and ACT Greens have committed to raise the minimum age of criminal responsibility in their Parliamentary and Governing Agreement for the Tenth Assembly. A Greens motion, passed during the Ninth Assembly, pledged to raise the MACR to 14 during the subsequent Assembly.
The existing MACR, nationwide, is supported by the presumption of the doli incapax principle, meaning “incapable of crime”, wherein children are presumed to be incapable of distinguishing right from wrong unless the prosecution can demonstrate otherwise. However, evidence increasingly suggests that this principle does not work effectively at protecting children from the criminal justice system, as it is targeted heavily in the courts and frequently rebutted. The most prevalent crimes committed by children of this age are theft, robbery and minor assault. With passage of the bill, individuals found to have committed these acts will no longer be able to be trialled, convicted and given prison sentences. Less common crimes such as manslaughter, murder and sexual assault would be, however, exempted from the MACR, with the accused aged 12 and 13 meeting conditions for trial.
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