Page 3595 - Week 12 - Thursday, 13 October 1994
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Madam Speaker, this Bill may appear to contain, generally speaking, technical and somewhat dry amendments to the Legal Practitioners Act. However, it will have the effect of clarifying and strengthening the provisions which regulate the legal profession in certain respects and of giving a more accessible avenue of redress for clients of the profession who believe that they have suffered a loss. The amendments of these aspects of the Act should benefit both the profession and the consumers of legal services in the Territory. I present the explanatory memorandum for the Bill.
Debate (on motion by Mr Humphries) adjourned.
CRIMES (AMENDMENT) BILL (No. 3) 1994
MR CONNOLLY (Attorney-General and Minister for Health) (10.37): Madam Speaker, I present the Crimes (Amendment) Bill (No. 3) 1994.
Title read by Clerk.
MR CONNOLLY: I move:
That this Bill be agreed to in principle.
Madam Speaker, the purpose of this Bill is to amend the Crimes Act 1900 to implement much needed reforms to the law relating to search, arrest and related matters for the investigation of most offences. The Bill reflects, to a large extent, Commonwealth legislation which will commence on 1 December 1994. It covers areas of the law which were the subject of careful examination by the Australian Law Reform Commission in its report "Criminal Investigation" in 1975 and more recently by the review of the Commonwealth criminal law chaired by the Rt Hon. Sir Harry Gibbs. This review committee consulted extensively Australia-wide, commencing in this subject area with a discussion paper on search warrants in September 1987.
To date laws in this area have been contained in Commonwealth statutes, even in relation to the ACT, and in other Territory laws, police instructions or general orders and case law. This has led to a considerable degree of uncertainty and inaccessibility of the law. This is incompatible with modern concepts of open administration and access to justice. The Bill is designed to make public, and to make significant advances in dealing with, the powers of police and the rights of individuals in the important areas of police investigation.
The Gibbs review made recommendations to modernise the law in relation to powers of search, arrest and related matters. That committee felt that it was essential that the Government stated clearly the balance which was considered appropriate between the community interest in effective law enforcement and the maintenance of individual rights and freedoms. In addition, the law needed to reflect and take into account technological and forensic advances made in recent years.
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