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House of Assembly - Fifty-Second Parliament, Second Session (52-2)
2013-07-04 Daily Xml
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CHILD PROTECTION

Mr PISONI (Unley) (15:07): My question is to the Attorney-General. How is it possible that it required the attendance of the parent taking photos at the site before the breach of bail conditions was identified?

The Hon. J.R. RAU (Enfield—Deputy Premier, Attorney-General, Minister for Planning, Minister for Industrial Relations, Minister for Business Services and Consumers) (15:07): I thank the honourable member for the question. I think it is important that we understand exactly what the law is now in respect of bail, as opposed to what we hope it will be after the legislation that will be introduced later today is, hopefully, passed through the parliament. The situation with bail is, first of all, there is a presumption in favour of bail. We have made exceptions for that in particular instances which have to do with people who are serious repeat violent offenders and people who are firearms offenders and serious and organised crime offenders, but the general proposition remains that a person is entitled to bail just as a person is entitled to a presumption of innocence until proven guilty. The present arrangements, the present law—

Mr PISONI: Point of order, sir: the question was about the breach of bail, not the establishment of bail.

The SPEAKER: The Attorney-General will join up his remarks.

The Hon. J.R. RAU: Thank you, Mr Speaker. I am attempting to set the scene for the honourable member for Unley, so that he sees it in its full majesty. As I was saying, the story is that we have a person charged with an offence. The person has a presumption in favour of bail, they have a presumption of innocence. The bail conditions are set. The bail conditions are set with regard to the nature of the offence which, in this case, is an allegation, at this stage unproved, of improper conduct involving children. The conditions of bail say specifically that you cannot touch children under the age of 17 at all, full stop, and you may not be in the presence of children under the age of 17 unaccompanied, full stop.

In order for that person to be in breach of their bail conditions they must have failed to comply with one or other or both of those conditions. In order to establish that to the satisfaction of a court under the present law the onus rests on those wishing to change the rules to establish to the court the reason for the change. The onus does not sit on the person who has the bail conditions to explain why the conditions should continue if there is no evidence suggesting they are not working.

It appears that the member for Unley, at a point in time, turns up at a police station with something which was evidence of some description satisfactory for the purposes of the police. From what I have been able to understand about this matter, it seems fairly clear that, until that particular material had been produced, the police had no evidence of a failure to comply with the conditions of bail by this particular individual.

It is not as if they had sat there and been unconcerned about the matter because, as I have explained already to the parliament, I am advised that the police had had intermittent visits of an undercover nature of a human source to keep them appraised of what was going on. In those circumstances, it is difficult to see, in the absence of any evidence, what sort of application could have been made to the court and what grounds could have been established to warrant a successful application to vary the bail conditions.

Bear in mind, again, that under the present law the court would have regarded the fact that to have completely banned the individual altogether might well have meant the individual ceased to have any employment at all. To do that in the absence of any evidence of there being any misbehaviour by the individual is obviously a serious matter. We as a government have decided that, even though that is such a serious matter, in the cases of child sex offenders, we are going to make that the presumed position. The legislation we are bringing forward to the parliament is very, very tough.

Time expired.

Mr PISONI: A supplementary, if I may, sir.

The SPEAKER: Perhaps just ask a question.

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