Mr DAVID SHOEBRIDGE [3.45 p.m.]: The O’Farrell Government’s first 18 months in office have seen a series of assaults on our civil liberties. Before they were elected this Government promised to end the law and order auction that has been a blight on New South Wales politics for more than two decades. It is safe to say that it has already broken that promise.
The extent of the attacks reveals a concerted and ideologically driven program to limit and remove fundamental rights from the people of New South Wales and shift power and control towards the police and the Executive Government.
I note some of the more damaging changes. In 2011 the expansion of move-on directions gave police an additional power to move on an intoxicated person. This law allows police to decide, based on their opinion alone, that a person is intoxicated and then force that person from a public place. Historically these powers have been used mainly against disadvantaged groups and it looks like history will repeat itself.
The Crimes (Criminal Organisation Control) Bill 2012 is a reheating of the so-called anti-bikie laws which the High Court had struck down in 2011. The laws criminalise association rather than criminal activity itself. The New South Wales Bar Association and Law Society also strongly opposed this law on the grounds that it unfairly impinges on human rights in New South Wales.
There is also the denial of Official Visitor access to those on preventative detention. This means that people held indefinitely in New South Wales prisons under anti-terror laws without charge will have no recourse to an independent external person to oversee the conditions of their incarceration.
The Government also introduced consorting as an offence as part of a suite of legislation introduced to target bikie gangs in New South Wales. It reintroduced a version of the 1920s consorting laws that were originally introduced to deal with the razor gangs in Paddington. Again, it criminalises people meeting with people, as opposed to real crimes.
The Government also revived the laws against drunk and disorderly conduct in a direct throwback to the 1970s when the offence of drunk and disorderly drew regular criticism and was finally struck off the statute books because of its unfair impact on marginalised groups. Not satisfied with that, Mr O’Farrell removed the long existing common law principle of spousal immunity.
This change will make it a blanket rule that regardless of the circumstances it will be a crime to not dob in your partner to the police. How does that advance our civil liberties?
One of the first actions this Government took was the introduction of mandatory sentencing with the Crimes Amendment (Murder of Police Officers) Bill 2011. This change removed all judicial discretion for sentencing where the defendant is found guilty of having murdered a police officer.
Murdering a police officer is a terrible crime but mandatory sentencing does not reduce offending and inherently leads to unjust outcomes. Then there are the anti-graffiti laws that are designed to force young offenders into the courts: no discretion, no flexibility and no room for common sense. This alone will increase, rather than reduce, the terrible number of young people in prison in New South Wales.
This week the Government passed laws to expand operations involving police drug detection dogs to all of Kings Cross and the Sydney, Hunter and Illawarra rail network. This step will expose yet more innocent people to intrusive and humiliating public searches following false positives by dogs.
It is well known that the drug detection dogs signal false positives 80 per cent of the time. The expanded operations will threaten the viability of the State’s only medically supervised injecting centre, which has been proven to save lives. And more changes have already been slated.
The New South Wales Government plans to abolish one of the oldest principles of the legal system: the right of an accused person to remain silent under questioning by the authorities. Under the proposed changes the refusal to answer questions could harm a person’s defence in a later court case.
The change has been sold as a win for victims. In reality, the change will put at risk the presumption of innocence. The risk in New South Wales is even greater because citizens have no bill of rights to ensure they get a fair trial or have the right to adequate legal assistance.
The Government has announced also that it intends to bring in legislation to provide for the indefinite detention of violent offenders who have finished their sentence to protect against future crime. Again, legal groups have spoken out strongly against this proposed change, identifying it as eroding the principle of the justice system that a person can only be punished for crimes he or she has committed, rather than potential crimes.
It is likely that these provisions would be used by politicians to seek to extend sentences in response to outrage at violent offenders being released, producing individual vigilante justice. Time after time when these laws are debated in Parliament The Greens are the only party speaking up for our fundamental rights and liberties.
Perhaps the Attorney General was right when he said there will be no law and order auction under his Government. Instead it has become a civil rights giveaway.
