Page 1691 - Week 05 - Tuesday, 3 May 2011
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Ms Bresnan has foreshadowed an amendment in relation to preventative search. I understand too the essential nature of the point that Ms Bresnan makes in relation to searches. Searches are and should be closely controlled; they should only be pursued when it is reasonable. These are provisions that this government particularly pursues only after very deep consideration of the implications and context of civil liberties and human rights and persons’ individual integrity in relation to what it is that they carry.
There was some commentary—and the government has responded to this, I know, only today—by the scrutiny of bills committee in relation to the breadth of the proposal. It is that particular issue that Ms Bresnan has taken on board. I have to say, and the government has said in its response to the scrutiny of bills committee today, that the breadth of the provision was quite intentional.
It has to be acknowledged, and I am sure members would if they thought about it, that it is regrettable but it is a fact that the range of items that are from time to time found during searches that could pose a safety risk is indeed very broad. It is a matter of regret, of course, that police and custodial officers are subjected to unwarranted, violent, unanticipated attacks from time to time by people that they take into custody. But we acknowledge too that on occasion a preventative search—and this is the point that Ms Bresnan goes to—where someone is taken into custody may result in the location of other items that are not directly relevant to the original purpose of the search but nevertheless disclose that an offence may have been committed.
A possible or potential result of the amendment that Ms Bresnan will move, and I think this would be ironic and not in the interests of justice, is that for an offence having being disclosed the disclosure or the evidence relating to that offence not be able to be pursued by police as a result of it being the original purpose of the search. If it were a lawful search, as one imagines it would be, conducted for a particular purpose and it disclosed an offence or evidence that an offence had been uncovered as a result of that, I think it would not be in the interest of justice—it is not practical, it is not pragmatic, it is not in the interest of justice—for that not to be available and no subsequent prosecution for that separate offence. Similarly to the opposition, the government will not be supporting the amendment.
Question resolved in the affirmative.
Bill agreed to in principle.
Detail stage
Clauses 1 to 22, by leave, taken together and agreed to.
Proposed new clauses 22A and 22B.
MR STANHOPE (Ginninderra—Chief Minister, Minister for Transport, Minister for Territory and Municipal Services, Minister for Business and Economic Development, Minister for Land and Property Services, Minister for Aboriginal and Torres Strait
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