Sentencing (Miscellaneous) Amendment Bill

Second Reading

Adjourned debate on second reading.

(Continued from 25 October 2018.)

The Hon. K.J. MAHER (Leader of the Opposition) (17:32): I rise to indicate that Labor will support this bill and that I will be the lead speaker and have carriage of this bill. As I understand it, the intention of this bill was to preclude a punishment of home detention for attempts to commit or to commit certain commonwealth offences, which would bring state and commonwealth regimes more closely in line. I say it was the intention because that appears to have been changed very significantly now.

I understand that there was initially a request of the commonwealth DPP to make these changes, but what was originally requested was included when this bill was introduced earlier by the Attorney-General in another place. However, the main work of this bill and those clauses that the commonwealth DPP apparently wanted in the bill have been removed. There are still some rats and mice issues in there that we support, but the bill has effectively been gutted.

The Attorney-General in another place has deleted the clauses, effectively leaving us with a very small bill in what can only be seen as another embarrassing misstep by the Attorney-General in relation to how she conducts her portfolio. We have seen this in a range of areas. We saw it with the Colin Humphrys case when one particular Monday morning the Attorney-General said that legislation definitely was not needed, there was no work to do here, nothing to see.

By that afternoon, in terms of the indefinite detention of sex offenders unwilling to control their sexual instincts, the Attorney-General had been completely overruled, had changed her mind completely and actually introduced almost mirror legislation to what the opposition put to parliament. The Attorney-General got that completely wrong and was sensibly rolled by either her cabinet or her party room.

Even more recently, we have seen a stoush between the Attorney-General and royal commissioner Bret Walker, the commissioner in the Murray-Darling Basin Royal Commission. There was a war of words when the Attorney-General appeared to misrepresent a royal commissioner and the royal commissioner, I think, asked that the media release the Attorney-General wrote should be completely withdrawn and that the royal commissioner was owed an apology. The royal commissioner went on to say that the way the Attorney-General conducted herself in these matters was wrong, discourteous and inappropriate. This is a very serious matter and it was a royal commissioner who made these comments about another unfortunate misstep by our hapless Attorney-General.

Questions have been raised even more recently about statements that the Attorney-General made in relation to the ICAC. We have seen different recollections of conversations from no less than the ICAC commissioner and the Attorney-General and the possibility having been raised that the ICAC legislation may have been breached by the state's first law officer, the person who the act is actually committed to, another huge misstep by the Attorney-General. We have seen, even more recently—and I understand it has caused quite some disquiet within government ranks, particularly government backbenchers—the Attorney-General under intense pressure with the possibility of a notorious paedophile getting court-ordered home detention in the Pasadena area.

I know that members of the government and backbenchers from the government and ones who have very serious concerns about the way the Attorney-General has conducted herself in this latest matter are quite right. We know there are significant portions of her own party who would be not too displeased if the Attorney-General was replaced by someone who would not keep making these very, very serious missteps. In fact, one mooted possibility is when the Kirribilli-style agreement comes to an end and there is a change of president halfway through this term, that another lawyer steps in to become Attorney-General when they step down from presidential positions—

The PRESIDENT: Please do not impugn the presidency in the second reading.

The Hon. K.J. MAHER: —and when the Hon. Terry Stephens becomes president and that would solve that. In fact, the way the Attorney-General has been conducting herself may mean such a change may be necessary even before the Kirribilli agreement comes into force in that two-year term. We may need another Attorney-General much, much sooner than that. The Labor Party supports the bill.

Members interjecting:

The PRESIDENT: Can we just cut the conversation out. The Hon. Ms Pnevmatikos.

Debate adjourned on motion of Hon. I. Pnevmatikos.