Page 721 - Week 03 - Tuesday, 1 April 2008
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
I indicate that the government will soon introduce into the Assembly changes to the way criminal proceedings are commenced. Court attendance notices will provide police with a straightforward and efficient method for bringing criminal charges to the court. A court attendance notice will be an easy-to-read document that clearly states all relevant information succinctly for the defendant and the court. The court attendance notice will inform the defendant of the consequences of non-attendance, such as the issuing of a warrant for their arrest, a default judgement or a period of imprisonment.
The Standing Committee on Legal Affairs has now tabled scrutiny report 51, which provides some very useful comments on this bill. I thank the committee for its comments and in my comments today I will seek to address some of the issues raised.
The Human Rights Act 2004 and the ACT Criminal Code 2002 have together guided the government in the preparation of this bill. When a government chooses to create an offence or regulate to make that offence liable to an infringement notice, it must consider the human rights implications of the exercise of that power. In this case, the bill engages the right to a fair trial and rights in criminal proceedings. Infringement notices are not a substitute for a trial. They offer a person the opportunity to pay the infringement notice penalty in exchange for no prosecution being commenced. The ACT has also adopted the model criminal code that specifies the way offences must be constructed in legislation.
Changes to the Crimes Act 1900 are at the core of this bill. The bill provides for two new minor offences: “defacing premises—strict liability” and “urinating in a public place”. The bill casts the offences in a manner that makes the offences appropriate for an infringement notice. It does this by making the physical elements clear and straightforward and removing the mental element from the offences—that is, making them strict liability offences.
It is readily accepted that the act of using a material to mark public or private property represents criminal behaviour. It is also recognised that it is in the public interest that these acts be prosecuted. The new offence of “defacing premises—strict liability” provides authorities with an important enforcement tool as part of the government’s graffiti management strategy for the ACT. This strategy takes a whole-of-community approach to the issue of reducing the incidence of graffiti vandalism. It also recognises the distinction between legal graffiti and illegal graffiti and highlights the need to clearly identify government-approved sites for people who engage in legal graffiti.
The bill also makes changes to the maximum penalty associated with the offence of defacing premises and noise abatement directions to bring them into line with other ACT offences. Concerns with the offence of defacing premises raised in the scrutiny report are grounded in the view that a person’s right to freedom of expression should be restricted only in the most justifiable of circumstances. The Canadian Supreme Court case of Ramsden v Peterborough (City) cited by the committee establishes the position that, whilst a relevant by-law in that jurisdiction did warrant the engagement of the freedom of expression, it did so in a manner that went too far by prohibiting all postering on all public property.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .