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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 03 Hansard (Thursday, 11 March 2004) . . Page.. 1136 ..

with a worrying frequency that cannot be disregarded. The opposition will be moving these amendments in the detail stage and will be supporting Mr Stanhope’s bill. At least this bill does take a few steps in the right direction, which is what the community wants to see. The opposition is pleased to support the bill.

MS DUNDAS (8.20): The Democrats will not be supporting the Bail Amendment Bill 2003 as proposed by the government. I foreshadow that the Democrats will not be supporting any of the amendments either. Unlike the Crimes Amendment Bill we have had more than one week to consider what the government has proposed with this legislation, but I am not at all happy that only this afternoon we saw the government’s quite substantial and quite complex amendments. I am concerned about the process. These are quite important parts of law that the government is trying to rush through.

If an accused is remanded awaiting trial the effect on their employment, reputation and relationships with friends and families can be severe. A lengthy period in remand can create a break in employment history that is difficult or impossible to conceal and can severely compromise future employment opportunities. If you accept the research findings that people are more likely to offend if they are excluded from society through unemployment then remanding someone, whether they are innocent or guilty as charged, may increase their likelihood of offending in the future.

Let us first consider the people who are innocent of their charge. I ask us all to imagine what it would be like to be locked in a cell for an offence that you did not commit even for a few hours, let alone weeks or years. Imagine then confronting a cold system that is hostile towards you, apathetic about your treatment and implicitly assuming your guilt. You will be confined with maximum security prisoners because that is our policy for remandees in the ACT. Meanwhile your professional and personal lives just disintegrate. Attempts to extricate yourself from this position are stymied by presumptions of law or unnecessary financial bail conditions that you cannot meet. There are any number of factors that have nothing to do with your actual guilt, innocence or the risk that you pose to the community. You then could spend months in a prison because your government does not regard your speedy trial as a priority.

Despite the difficulties of preparing a defence in prison, the charges against you are exposed as groundless at trial. You then get to walk free from the court but with no apology, no counselling and no compensation. How would you feel? We are all one unfounded allegation away from wrongful imprisonment. We have figures that show that in Western Australia only a third of people remanded in custody are sentenced to a term of imprisonment following trial. One in three remandees is acquitted, demonstrating that they should never have been arrested in the first place. There are certainly instances where remand is necessary for the protection of victims or potential victims, but this represents a minority of cases where people are remanded awaiting trial. At present 14 per cent of Australia’s prison population has not been convicted and sentenced by a court of law. Considering that approximately one-third of those remanded will be found guilty but will not get custodial sentences and that one-third of remand prisoners will be found not guilty and cleared, nearly one in 10 of our remand and convicted prisoners taken together should not be in prison.

The presumption of innocence is one of the most fundamental rights held by citizens of this country and in most democracies. Getting tough on crime strategies should not be

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