Page 3795 - Week 14 - Thursday, 10 December 1992
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offence; or if the official would not allow the person to leave if the person wished to do so; or a person to whom the official has given reason to believe, on reasonable grounds, that the person would not be allowed to leave if he or she wished to do so.
Where a person under investigation for an offence makes an admission or a confession, there is a higher requirement of proof that such a statement was in fact made. For this reason, the Bill provides for the application of sections 23U and 23V of the Commonwealth Act to the investigation of summary offences where an interpreter is present during the questioning. The effect will be that, if a person who is being interviewed as a suspect in the commission of a summary offence with the assistance of an interpreter makes a confession or admission to an investigating official, that confession or admission will be inadmissible as evidence against the person unless the confession or admission was tape-recorded or, where it was impracticable to tape-record the questioning, a written record was made and read to the person. The effect will be that the same requirement will be made in the investigation of a summary offence as is currently provided for in relation to an indictable offence.
The applied provisions will not apply to an offence under the Motor Traffic (Alcohol and Drugs) Act 1977 as such offences are of strict liability based on the evidence of a scientific instrument, that is, RBTs, or to an offence under the Motor Traffic Act 1936 for which a traffic infringement notice is to be issued, unless the police officer decides to proceed otherwise than by the issue of a traffic infringement notice. Such an offence would not normally require questioning of the kind for which an interpreter would be required. Mr Deputy Speaker, I present the explanatory memorandum to the Bill.
Debate (on motion by Mr Humphries) adjourned.
CONSERVATION, HERITAGE AND ENVIRONMENT -
STANDING COMMITTEE
Report on Renewable Energy
Debate resumed from 19 November 1992, on motion by Mr Moore:
That the report be noted.
MR HUMPHRIES (11.47): Mr Deputy Speaker, I want to make some comments on this report. I was a member of the Standing Committee on Conservation, Heritage and Environment in the old Assembly, which did some early work on some of the issues that are touched on in this report. Obviously, a lot more has been done since I left the committee, but some of the elements did appear in work done by the earlier version of this committee. I want to raise some of the issues that occurred to me as I read through this report.
This report raises a series of important issues for the Territory and for the preservation of our environment, and for the minimisation of our use of non-renewable fossil fuels. However, I think the criticism can be levelled that it raises those issues without necessarily advancing them very much further. I am a little disappointed that there are so many recommendations in this report that are essentially recommendations to somebody else to take the matter a step further.
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