Bills

Criminal Law Consolidation (Assaults on Emergency Workers) Amendment Bill

Introduction and First Reading

Mr ODENWALDER (Elizabeth) (10:31): Obtained leave and introduced a bill for an act to amend the Criminal Law Consolidation Act 1935 and to make related amendments to the Criminal Law (Forensic Procedures) Act 2007, the Sentencing Act 2017 and the Summary Offences Act 1953. Read a first time.

Second Reading

Mr ODENWALDER (Elizabeth) (10:32): I move:

That this bill be now read a second time.

In October last year, following various court decisions on assaults on police in this state and also following updated legislation recently enacted in Victoria, the Police Association of South Australia announced their intention to publicly campaign for the introduction of new legislation. Broadly, it would remove the police assault provisions from the Summary Offences Act so that offenders were always charged under the Criminal Law Consolidation Act for assaults on police, and it would look at adequate penalties and sentencing guidelines to properly punish offenders and deter others from assaulting and harming police and emergency workers.

I immediately commenced discussions with the Police Association and other relevant groups on behalf of the opposition about what specific action we might take in this state to give police and emergency workers the protections they need. It became very clear that change is needed, in terms of both punishment for offenders who assault and injure these workers and deterrence, so that the courts, the public and potential criminals get the message loud and clear that assaulting and harming police and emergency workers in their line of duty is a very serious offence and will not be tolerated anymore.

These discussions continued on what legislative framework would give these workers the protections they need while still retaining the judicial discretion that is at the heart of our system. In February this year, the Police Association wrote to me and, I am advised, to the Attorney-General outlining what they thought were sensible amendments to the law, and we recommenced discussions with the association on that basis.

I also consulted with other unions, agencies and volunteer organisations as well as talking to individual front-line cops and emergency workers. As a result of these discussions, the Leader of the Opposition and I released a draft bill for public comment. While the government sat on its hands and was almost entirely silent on this issue, we were out on the front foot letting the public and emergency workers know our intentions and asking for their input on how the legislation might be improved and strengthened. We went out with a proposal that we thought got the balance right, and after a period of consultation and discussion we arrived at the proposal before the house today.

This bill makes several significant changes to the law and, when seen cumulatively, should send a very clear message to the affected workers, the courts and the community that this parliament will no longer tolerate the level of violence against emergency workers that we have seen in recent years. The first change is that it entirely removes section 6—Assault police, hinder police and resist police—from the Summary Offences Act and places these offences entirely in the criminal code.

The changes to the simple assault provisions are self-explanatory: they make the offence more serious and place higher penalties on offenders. However, after discussions with the Police Association of South Australia, I decided to include 'resist and hinder' in the proposed changes after concerns that police officers were often injured, sometimes quite seriously, in the course of an arrest and that there was no adequate remedy when the elements of an assault could not be established. Following on from that, the bill creates specific offences in the Criminal Law Consolidation Act to deal with assaults against police and emergency services workers and carries tougher penalties. I will go through the penalties shortly.

There has been a lot of public and private discussion about which workers should or should not be included in the definition of 'prescribed worker' for the purposes of these offences, and I would expect those discussions will be ongoing. They will be placed in the regulations after the passage of the bill. The rule of thumb in framing the regulations around these workers should, I think, be the general principle that these workers go into situations willingly, knowing that they may well be dangerous, in order to protect people, property and/or the general community, or administer emergency medical treatment.

Workers other than police who may be included in the regulations include ambulance officers and paramedics; members of the Metropolitan Fire Service, Country Fire Service or State Emergency Service, whether they work in a voluntary or paid capacity; and certain classes of nurses, other medical staff, corrections officers and youth training officers. Obviously, the discussions about who will be included in the regulations will be ongoing, and any mention I have made of specific occupations is absolutely not exhaustive or exclusive.

The offences are as follows. The first and most serious is causing harm to a prescribed emergency worker acting in the course of their official duties, intending to cause harm. This carries a maximum penalty of 15 years. At present, the corresponding aggravated offence in the Criminal Law Consolidation Act carries a maximum penalty of 13 years, so that is an increase of two years for that particular offence.

The next offence is causing harm to a prescribed emergency worker acting in the course of official duties through a reckless act, which carries a maximum penalty of 10 years; assaulting a prescribed emergency worker acting in the course of official duties, which carries a maximum penalty of five years, that is, for simple assault; and hindering or resisting a police officer acting in the course of their official duties. The maximum penalty for this is two years, as is currently the case; however, if harm is caused to that police officer, it carries a maximum penalty of 10 years, bringing it in line with the recklessly causing harm provision mentioned previously.

It should also be noted that the provisions in the Criminal Law Consolidation Act around serious harm, where the maximum penalty is 25 years, remain unchanged. However, increased penalties alone are not enough, particularly for offences in which harm is caused to the worker. Importantly, this bill makes amendments to the Sentencing Act, which, seen together, further underline the seriousness of these offences in the eyes of the opposition.

The first important change is that it puts any of those assaults or acts against police and prescribed workers that result in harm to that worker in the category of a 'designated offence' for the purposes of sentencing. This means that a sentence of imprisonment imposed by a court cannot be suspended if, during the five-year period immediately preceding the date on which the relevant offence was committed, a court has suspended a custodial sentence for this or another designated offence. In short, this ensures that anyone who has received a suspended sentence cannot have a custodial sentence suspended again.

I want to emphasise at this point that this proposal is not a mandatory minimum sentencing regime. As with other existing designated offences under section 96 of the Sentencing Act, the court retains the absolute discretion not to impose custodial sentences where it is not deemed appropriate. It simply means that anyone who has received a suspended sentence cannot have their sentence suspended again, assuming that the court has seen the offending as sufficiently serious to warrant a custodial sentence. This is why the next provision is so important; the two work in concert.

The bill further amends the Sentencing Act to make deterrence against these types of offences a 'secondary sentencing purpose'. This will ensure that a court, during sentencing, must explicitly consider that the sentence imposed will serve to deter the defendant and others in the community from harming or assaulting emergency workers who are acting in the course of their official duties.

As I said, the government has been almost entirely silent throughout this debate. The Minister for Police has been completely silent, despite the fact that it is largely the workforce he is responsible for that will be affected by these changes. Indeed, it is members of his workforce who have been asking for these changes. For him not to have an opinion during a debate that has been going on for at least seven months is staggering.

We have all heard anecdotally about addresses where ambulances are reluctant to attend. I am advised that the increasing incidence of violence and aggression towards ambos resulted in the SA Ambulance Service instigating a high-risk address procedure, whereby addresses are red flagged as having previous episodes of violence or aggression and they will only respond with a SAPOL presence. Clearly, this situation is not ideal.

The advice I received from the ambos union was unequivocal: there is currently no deterrent in place that may make potential offenders think twice before attacking those who risk their safety in the protection of the community. You would have thought the health minister might have been concerned about this.

Finally, the Attorney-General was almost entirely silent up until very recently. She hurried to play catch-up and finally made some public statements last month about the nature of the government's response. I will not, of course, make any references to another bill that is before the house—I am very much looking forward to doing that—but her public comments reflect a government that is not listening and does not care.

The core of the Attorney's public statements was the proposal to clarify the status of the use of human biological material, such as urine, faeces and semen, in an assault on a prescribed worker. These comments came out of discussions with SAPOL, we understand; however, my advice is that the types of behaviour that the Attorney-General described already constitute an assault under the existing provisions and that harm resulting from these behaviours already constitutes harm.

Out of an abundance of caution, this bill clarifies those things and, by nature of the other provisions, substantially increases the penalties. Incidentally, it also makes this behaviour a designated offence for the purpose of sentencing when it results in harm. This week, we learned that assaults on police officers have increased by more than 8 per cent. It stands at a staggering 771 assaults over the 12 months to April this year. We on this side of the house say that enough is enough.

I want to be crystal clear that it is my intention—and, if this bill passes, it will be seen as the parliament's intention—that people who injure police officers, ambulance workers and other front-line emergency workers when they are simply trying to do their job protecting, serving, helping and treating members of the public will feel the full force of the law. Sentencing should be appropriate to punish these offenders and deter others who think they will get away with it with just a slap on the wrist. With the passage of this bill, those days are over.

Debate adjourned on motion of Mr Pederick.