Page 2394 - Week 06 - Thursday, 24 June 2010
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The amendment I will propose in the detail stage is a simple one which seeks to address this apparent inconsistency. The other major question relates to emergency authorisations by a law enforcement officer. An application for an emergency authorisation must show reasonable grounds for suspicion or belief. In addition, there are only very limited circumstances in which an emergency authorisation can be given.
The authorising officer must be satisfied that there are reasonable grounds for suspicion or belief. The human rights arguments in this case are much stronger. Indeed, Civil Liberties Australia calls on the government to amend these provisions such that the emergency authorisation in the form of a warrant can be issued by a duty magistrate. I consider this has some merit, and the scrutiny committee in its report 21 agrees.
I note that the correspondence between Mr Rattenbury and Mr Corbell addressed this matter as well. It is interesting to note from Mr Corbell’s reply both to Mr Rattenbury and the scrutiny committee that the utilisation of duty magistrates is, and I quote: “precisely what the Bill anticipates”. Mr Corbell goes on to say that the grounds of practicality on which an emergency authorisation might be made will only be made if, and again I quote, “There is no judicial officer available by telephone to grant the warrant.”
It is unfortunate that this was not made clear in the drafting of the bill, nor was it discussed in the explanatory statement or in the attorney’s presentation speech. Were it so, perhaps there may not have been so much discussion of it in the scrutiny committee, by Civil Liberties Australia or by the Human Rights and Discrimination Commissioner. Simply said, the discussion that has occurred indicates that the language in the bill is unclear on this matter.
The Greens are proposing amendments to address this issue and to make the position clearer. The Canberra Liberals will be supporting those amendments. Nonetheless, there are only very limited circumstances in which an emergency authority can be given and these must be validated by a warrant application to a court within two working days. If the bill is otherwise lacking in this area, it is that it does not give the court a deadline by which an ex post facto application must be considered and decided upon.
Quite simply, Madam Deputy Speaker, you have to start the process within two working days but there is nothing to tell the court how long they must take to finalise that process. I think that is something we will have to keep an eye on. Indeed, time limits are not placed on the assessment by judicial officers of any warrant applications, whether they are for new warrants, retrieval warrants or extensions.
Perhaps a time limit would be especially important in the case of warrant applications following an emergency authorisation. Overall and on balance, but subject to consideration of the amendments to be proposed by the Greens and ourselves, I am satisfied that the bill adequately addresses the human rights issues. In the view of the Canberra Liberals, the conditional, compliance, monitoring, accountability and reporting provisions in the bill, in concert with the requirements of the Human Rights Act and the process required for obtaining warrants, provide sufficient safeguards from a human rights viewpoint.
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