Criminal Law Consolidation (Assaults on Prescribed Emergency Workers) Amendment Bill

Final Stages

Consideration in committee of the Legislative Council's amendments.

The Hon. V.A. CHAPMAN: I move:

That the Legislative Council's amendments be agreed to.

I indicate that the government will be supporting the amendments made in the Legislative Council in respect of this bill, which will ensure its passage through the parliament today. I thank the Legislative Council for its consideration of the matter, including both government and other party amendments that have been incorporated. The passage of this legislation and the advance of special provision for emergency service worker assaults certainly make some history. I remain puzzled as to why there had not been an advance of this during the course of the previous administration.

I wish to commend, firstly, the Police Association of South Australia for their first advocacy of the matter, bringing it to the attention of the new government. Secondly, I commend the support of a number of other bodies, including the police commissioner himself, who took an active interest in this matter, which consequently enabled us to see a new provision for bodily fluid offences that incorporates some groundbreaking legislation. I thank the police commissioner for his active interest in this matter.

The South Australian chapter of the Australian Medical Association, the nurses union and the representatives of our emergency service workers also made a very significant contribution to the development of this new law and to the culmination of what is groundbreaking legislation. We are very pleased that that has advanced.

Certainly, there are aspects of the bill that have been incorporated from other parts of our criminal law, and they are consolidated in a new format. Whilst that may not add to some of the benefits of the bill, it does consolidate it within the Criminal Law Consolidation Act. There is a new element in the hinder police provisions, which, I am pleased to say, have not been abandoned; that is, hinder police has been salvaged and introduced into the Criminal Law Consolidation Act, so it will be retained.

The chief feature in the success of this legislation, and the message that it sends to our superior courts in regard to the community's high level of intolerance for this, is whether the prosecuting authorities and the investigative authorities—which principally lay with SAPOL in the first instance—do prosecute these matters and maintain a diligence in their prosecution of the matter to ensure that there is every opportunity for successful convictions to be obtained and that submissions are made to treat the seriousness of such offending and that it is reflected in that.

The new shell has added a new dedicated offence, a specific offence in relation to the transfer of bodily fluids that potentially affect, in a very dangerous way, the vulnerability of our emergency workers to contamination and disease transfer, which we all know is completely unacceptable. With that, I thank all those who made a contribution, and I thank the Legislative Council for its consideration of the matter.

Mr ODENWALDER: I want to thank the government and the Attorney-General for the interesting experience of, together, guiding these matters through the parliament. I also acknowledge the Legislative Council and the crossbenchers in the Legislative Council—the Greens, SA-Best and the Hon. John Darley—and particularly the Hon. Frank Pangallo, who made some last-minute contributions to the definitions of prescribed workers to include those law enforcement officers who enforce the law around animal protection.

In short, this is a win, of course, for our police, for our ambos, for our emergency services workers, and it is something that the Police Association has been calling for since October. I do want to thank the government, but I wonder why it took so long to get to this point. But I do not want to dwell on that; I want to dwell on the fact that it is in fact a win for our emergency services workers.

The measures in this bill, as the Attorney said, send a very clear message to the courts, and the superior courts particularly, that assaults and particularly harm to police officers, ambos, emergency workers and nurses will no longer be tolerated. There has been a perception and indeed a reality that many perpetrators have been lightly dealt with by the courts. This has to end. As of when this bill is assented to, those days hopefully will be over and those messages will get through not only to the courts but also to the police themselves and to the prosecutors and, one would hope, to the offenders. That is a hope we all have—that the laws that we pass in this place finally trickle down to the people who commit the offences.

As the Attorney says, the final bill clarifies that the exchange of human biological material can constitute an assault and can constitute harm in certain contexts. I thought it was always a given that that was the case, but I am happy to support any amendments which clarify that. I understand the police commissioner wanted that, and I think sections of the ambos and the nurses wanted that too. I see no reason not to make that absolutely clear in this legislation.

Importantly, the bill creates dedicated offences within the Criminal Law Consolidation Act above and beyond the aggravated offences of assault and cause harm and those types of things. It creates specific offences which deal specifically with police, ambulance officers, nurses, medical practitioners within hospitals, corrections officers who work in the community and a suite of other people who, by definition, go into harm's way to protect life and property and to treat people in emergencies.

It does that, but the most important part of all, I think, is the changes to the Sentencing Act. The government and the opposition agreed early on that there should be a change to the secondary sentencing principles which go towards the courts making decisions based on the fact that it will deter people from committing these offences. Also, there is the amendment the opposition brought in, which was supported by the Legislative Council and is now supported by the government, which makes any of these offences with harm designated offences. This means that the courts cannot impose a second suspended sentence within a five-year period for an offence like this which causes harm to an emergency services worker.

I do want to thank the government for supporting the amendments and for providing, finally, the passage of this bill. I want to thank particularly those members of the Legislative Council who got behind the amendments and got behind our police, our ambos and our emergency services workers. Finally, I commend this bill to the house.

Motion carried.