Question Time

Summary Offences Act

The Hon. C. BONAROS (14:53): My question is to the Attorney-General. Attorney, to your knowledge have there been any prosecutions, successful or otherwise, pursuant to section 40 of the Summary Offences Act?

The Hon. K.J. MAHER (Minister for Aboriginal Affairs, Attorney-General, Minister for Industrial Relations and Public Sector) (14:54): I thank the honourable member for her question. It is a matter that came up recently. Sometimes we look at laws that have been historical laws in bits of legislation that have been there for a very long time. There are laws, for example, that were only recently repealed in Western Australia, which, if my memory serves me correctly, created an offence for carrying more than 50 kilograms of potatoes without the permission of the Potato Marketing Corporation—laws that have been around for various reasons but appear in statute books.

This is one that came up recently: section 40 of the Summary Offences Act is in relation to 'Acting as a spiritualist, medium etc with intent to defraud'. It has a long history of this and incarnations of this particular sort of offence that date right back to the United Kingdom's Witchcraft Act of 1735, under which I think the last attempted prosecutions were actually reasonably recently under the UK act in 1944, having been two cases that year.

There was one involving a woman called Rebecca York and, a more prominent one, a woman by the name of Helen Duncan who was alleged to have preyed on grieving people, claiming she could contact their departed loved ones and used the idea of being a medium as a thinly deceptive way to receive benefit. In relation to the South Australian section 40 of the Summary Offences Act, which states:

A person who, with intent to defraud, purports to act as a spiritualist or medium, or to exercise powers of telepathy or clairvoyance or other similar powers, is guilty of an offence…[for up to] 2 years.

I have checked and I am not aware of any prosecutions that have successfully been undertaken for someone who acts with intent to defraud as any of those sorts of things. I thank the honourable member for her important question and her interest in all manner of offences.