Page 2517 - Week 06 - Thursday, 23 June 2011
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Court to clear its backlog. But it is a false strategy. It is false because it fails in its attempt to restrict judge-alone trials. It is false because the exclusion of offences from the ability to be heard before a judge alone is an extreme measure that is arbitrary and without foundation. It is false because it does not go far enough with its reform of offence penalties.
This bill fails in every respect. It fails in logic. It fails in construction. It fails in consultation. It fails in foundation. It fails in completeness. And it fails in effect. The amendments which will be moved by Mrs Dunne on behalf of the Canberra Liberals will fix those failures. Our amendments will fix them because the Canberra Liberals are the party in this place who listen to what the community have to say. We have listened to the experts. We have listened to those who use the system. We have considered the importance of the issue: the importance of ensuring that jury trials are affirmed—that no-one should have the arbitrary ability to avoid a jury trial and that we should maintain the ability, in exceptional circumstances across the board, for courts to decide when judge-alone trials should be enabled. That is the far more sensible course, and I commend Mrs Dunne’s approach to the Assembly.
MR CORBELL (Molonglo—Attorney-General, Minister for the Environment and Sustainable Development, Minister for Territory and Municipal Services and Minister for Police and Emergency Services) (10.35), in reply: I thank the Greens and Mr Rattenbury for their support of this bill. I have to confess that I am unclear as to the Liberal Party’s decision. Will they be voting in principle in favour of the bill or will they not? Will they be opposing it? They talk about the importance of placing juries at the centre of the criminal justice system but I sense that the Liberal Party are going to oppose this bill.
What are their arguments for opposing this bill? They say that it does not go far enough but because it does not go far enough they are not even prepared to go a little bit of the way towards improving the role of juries in our criminal justice system. Instead, they are going to say, “We don’t support any change.”
The Liberal Party are trying to have it both ways. They are trying to say that jury trials should be the norm, not the exception, but they are going to oppose the bill. They are going to oppose the bill today. They are going to vote against it in principle today.
Mr Seselja: That’s not true.
MR CORBELL: It is not true? Mrs Dunne just indicated that she is going to oppose the bill. Who knows what the Liberal Party’s position in relation to this matter is.
Let me respond to some of the issues that have been raised in the debate. Mr Seselja and Mrs Dunne have both argued that the government did not consider options other than to prescribe certain offences where a jury trial must be undertaken. That is simply not the case. In the 2008 discussion paper which the government released on the matter and which the Liberals conveniently ignore when they make their claims about lack of consultation, these models were canvassed. Both the judicial discretion model and the Crown veto model were canvassed as options for reform.
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