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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 03 Hansard (Thursday, 11 March 2004) . . Page.. 1160 ..

MR STANHOPE (Chief Minister, Attorney-General, Minister for Community Affairs and Minister for Environment) (9.58): Mr Speaker, I seek leave to move amendments Nos 1 to 5 circulated in my name together.

Leave granted.

MR STANHOPE: I move amendments Nos 1 to 5 [see schedule 7 at page 1190]. I first table a supplementary explanatory statement. I will speak to the five amendments that I have just moved. Amendment 1 is a minor technical amendment and will commence when the Bail Amendment Bill is enacted and comes into force. The amendment will not affect the commencement of other provisions of the bill. Amendment 2 is a proposed new clause 377(4). Clause 377 sets out the rules for dealing with goods that have been forfeited in connection with an offence of unlawfully possessing stolen property under clause 324 of the bill. Primarily goods must be sold and the proceeds paid to the Confiscated Asset Trust Fund under the Confiscation of Criminal Assets Act 2003. However, subclause 377(4) provides that the minister may direct that the goods be dealt with otherwise. This amendment provides that the minister’s direction is a disallowable instrument. Amendment 3 proposes a proposed new section 286 of the Land (Planning and Environment) Act. Schedule 1 of the bill amends a number of acts with corporate criminal responsibility provisions that will be made redundant by the full commencement of part 2.5 of the criminal code.

Most of the sections being amended deal with both corporate criminal responsibility and criminal responsibility of natural persons; therefore, in most cases the schedule substitutes revised sections that remove the corporate criminal responsibility component but leave the principal/agent components to continue to operate. This amendment will make a similar change to section 286 of the Land (Planning and Environment) Act. Amendment 4 is proposed new part 3.1A of the Bail Act. The Bail Amendment Bill will amend the Bail Act. Proposed new sections 9D and 9G of the Bail Amendment Bill contain examples that refer to offences in the Crimes Act. These amendments will substitute the references in the Bail Amendment Bill to the Crimes Act provisions with reference to the corresponding criminal code provisions.

Amendment 5 is a proposed new part 3.4 of the Victims of Crime (Financial Assistance) Act 1983. Section 3 of the Victims of Crime (Financial Assistance) Act specifies the violent crimes for which financial assistance is available under the act. This amendment will remove references to the Crimes Act offences of robbery and armed robbery and substitute references to the corresponding criminal code provisions of robbery and aggravated robbery, which will be replaced in the Crimes Act robbery offences.

MS DUNDAS (10.00): I will speak briefly to a few of these amendments, particularly to amendment 3. This amendment stemmed from a question from my office about why the Land (Planning and Environment) Act was not included in schedule 1 of the Criminal Code (Theft, Fraud, Bribery and Related Offences) Amendment Bill 2003. I was disturbed to learn from the appearance of this amendment that the omission was just a mistake. I have spoken about what this particular provision does in my in-principle speech and I continue to register my discomfort about the transfer of fault elements being done by this method.

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