Page 3625 - Week 10 - Tuesday, 25 August 2009
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Powers will only be available to officers who have been authorised at the most senior levels of command within ACT Policing. In future, I have already indicated to the Assembly that I will be introducing additional cross-border investigative laws, including provisions with respect to surveillance devices and witness protection. This suite of reforms will continue the work of integrating ACT powers with the national scheme already agreed by all Attorneys-General through SCAG.
When I introduced the Crimes (Controlled Operations) Bill back in 2008, I also announced a review of police criminal investigative powers. This work is ongoing. I am advised that the work through the committee, involving officers from my department, criminal justice agencies and stakeholders like the Bar Association and the Law Society, is proceeding well. I would like to commend officers of my department for their diligence and work they have undertaken in that regard.
I would like to take this opportunity to advise the Assembly that there are a range of additional tasks that I have asked my department to progress as a result of this particular report. Specifically, the government will be giving consideration to a provision for the offences of affray and participation in criminal groups and recruiting persons to engage in criminal activity. The government is also giving consideration to the concept of joint criminal enterprise. Such a provision would apply where a group of two or more offenders agree to commit an offence together. The effect would be that responsibility for criminal activity engaged in under an agreement by one member of the group is extended to all other members of the group.
The commonwealth has recently introduced the Crimes Legislation Amendment (Serious and Organised Crime) Bill that includes joint criminal enterprise into the commonwealth Criminal Code. Advice to my department from stakeholders in the legal and law enforcement community have suggested that it would be desirable, given that the commonwealth has indicated its reform, for the ACT to also give consideration to such amendments.
The Australian Senate Standing Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs is currently reviewing these arrangements, and I will be carefully considering how the commonwealth resolves the tensions between the need for effective law enforcement and well-established legal principles.
I also take the opportunity to advise members that I have asked my department to progress work with a view to introducing unexplained wealth provisions. I note that, if passed, the commonwealth bill will introduce unexplained wealth provisions into commonwealth legislation. Such provisions would be aimed at individuals involved in criminal activities who obtain profit from those activities and whose wealth cannot be explained by their legitimate sources of income.
The government will progress work on unexplained wealth separately, given the nature of issues to be considered with the ACT’s confiscation of criminal assets scheme and how unexplained provisions can function optimally with the existing scheme. There are clearly many lessons to be learned from other jurisdictions in this regard. In particular, the experiences in the Northern Territory and Western Australia
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