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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 14 Hansard (11 December) . . Page.. 5210 ..
MR STANHOPE (continuing):
The law of bail is as old as the foundations of our legal system. Bail law has always been the test of our community's legal principles. For over 800 years officers of the Crown, courts and parliaments have strived to steer the best course for bail between the competing tenets of the presumption of innocence and community safety. The bill that I am introducing to the Assembly today reflects the government's policy to enable the courts to decide to grant or disallow bail in a manner that considers both community expectations and our community's legal principles. This bill has been a long time in the making.
The previous government referred the issue of bail laws to the ACT Law Reform Commission in December 1997. The commission was asked to review the Bail Act 1992 to ascertain any changes that would better suit the public interest and interests of victims of crime. The commission was also asked to assess the success of the Bail Act and specifically review criteria for the grant of bail. The commission's report was released on 13 July 2001. My government gave careful consideration to the commission's recommendations.
In June this year I tabled the government's response to the report, which supported the majority of the commission's 25 recommendations. Consistent with the government's response, the government has drafted the Bail Amendment Bill 2003, which I introduce in the Assembly today. The bill addresses the government's policy as outlined in the government response and a number of other issues identified in consultation with the Supreme Court, the Magistrates Court, the Director of Public Prosecutions, the Australian Federal Police and other key community partners.
Our community asks a lot of our police, our magistrates and judges. These officers have to make decisions about bail regularly and consider a myriad of situations and circumstances. They have to live with the decisions they make about other people's lives, particularly victims and their relatives. The bill provides clarity for bail decision makers in the community.
The major change the bill makes in the territory's bail system is the explicit identification of crimes which attract different types of presumption: a presumption for bail, a presumption against bail and in some cases no presumption at all. The bill will create a presumption against bail for murder and the ancillary offences of murder, such as attempted murder, conspiracy to murder and accessory to murder. The bill removes any presumption whatsoever for the following serious crimes: manslaughter; industrial manslaughter; intentionally inflicting grievous bodily harm; sexual assault in the first degree; sexual assault in the second degree; sexual intercourse with a young person under the age of 10; manufacture of drugs of dependence; cultivation of prohibited plants for supply; wholesale or sale of prohibited substances or drugs of dependence; Commonwealth Customs Act drug trafficking offences; armed robbery; aggravated burglary; and treason.
The bill also creates a neutral presumption towards bail for people charged with an offence involving violence or threatened violence if the accused person was found guilty of one of the following offences within 10 years prior to the current charge: a threat to kill; a threat to inflict grievous bodily harm; stalking; and contravention of a protection order. Removing any presumption for or against bail in relation to these serious offences will allow the courts to hear each and every case on its merits without any intervening
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