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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2001 Week 8 Hansard (7 August) . . Page.. 2498 ..

MR STEFANIAK: Thank you, Mr Kaine. I will now go through what some of the members have said. I was a little disappointed, although not surprised, by the Labor Party's position. I thought that we were getting somewhere and they were actually starting to listen to the community, listen to the concerns of police and listen to members of the legal fraternity in terms of the first bail amendment bill of 2001, but they are probably showing their true colours now in rejecting this sensible piece of legislation.

This bill, No 2, is before the Assembly because of problems-I mentioned one raised by the Chief Justice-with people on bail not appearing when required. Bail is then forfeited and such persons are not on bail. Those persons might then commit further offences and, by the time they are apprehended for those offences and brought before the court, the law as it currently stands would not apply because they were not on bail, although I do not think anyone in their right mind would argue that such persons should not have anything occur other than be remanded in custody. Why should they escape when other people who commit offences while on bail would not escape?

The Chief Magistrate also raised problems caused by VATACs and summonses. I had several discussions with him about those matters. Summonses are used in the territory fairly frequently, and have been since the 1980s. In fact, in the 1980s, under a federal Labor government, summonses were the preferred form of initiating actions unless you really did have to charge someone and then bail them, so quite a number of people are summonsed. I think it is grossly unfair that a person of no fixed abode who has allegedly committed, say, 10 burglaries should be subject to these penalties, although I would think they would deserve it, unless there were exceptional circumstances, if they were on bail and then committed further offences and were remanded in custody, whereas someone of a fixed place of abode who is charged with 10 burglaries and who is summonsed to attend court should not have the same presumption apply if they commit further offences prior to their matters being finalised because they have a fixed place of abode and it looks like they are not going anywhere. I think that there is an equity issue there which a lot of the members who are so-called civil libertarians are actually missing.

There are historical reasons why there are VATACs and summonses for people in the territory. They are matters are of concern to the Chief Magistrate. Those matters were raised within a few weeks of the previous amendment to the act being passed. As a result, I thought it was very important that we fix the problem. I am responding there as much as anything to concerns by the Chief Magistrate and observations made in a particular case by the Chief Justice. They are members of the judiciary, so it is not just a matter of concern to the police, as Mr Hargreaves would tend to think.

Mr Stanhope raised a very good point about Operation Anchorage and the fact that one person was charged four times-I am not too sure of the sex of that person-and asked why on earth that person got bail, and one must assume that that person did get bail. If you look at the act, you will probably see some provisions there whereby a court can grant bail. I am not casting any aspersions on the judiciary-maybe Mr Stanhope should ask the relevant magistrate-but the fact is that the Chief Magistrate and a number of other members of the judiciary had concerns about the Bail Act 1992 in relation to this matter. Until we amended the act last May, they felt that there was very

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