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House of Assembly - Fifty-Third Parliament, First Session (53-1)
2014-11-12 Daily Xml
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Justice Reform

Mr GARDNER (Morialta) (14:21): My supplementary—

The SPEAKER: Supplementary, member for Morialta.

Mr GARDNER: —is to the Minister for Justice Reform. Given that yesterday, when answering a similar question, he identified that the government's approach was going to be based on changes to bail laws and other things in his justice reform package, which is due out, I think, at the end of this year or early next year, and given that the courts are closing for nine days, will the minister now release his bail reform proposals so that they can be considered immediately?

The Hon. J.R. RAU (Enfield—Deputy Premier, Attorney-General, Minister for Justice Reform, Minister for Planning, Minister for Housing and Urban Development, Minister for Industrial Relations) (14:21): I thank the honourable member for his question. I am working on a number of proposals, some of them very actively, in conjunction with the Minister for Police and Corrections. As a matter of fact, the Minister for Police and Corrections and I have been very busy in looking at this particular problem, and we feel that we are reasonably close to being in a position where we have something we can say publicly about some of these matters.

I need to emphasise again what I was trying to explain yesterday: none of this is a simple, silver bullet solution to the problem. That is just not the case. It is no more realistic to say, 'Tweak the courts,' or tweak something, 'and you'll solve this problem,' than it is to say, 'Have lessons in being a nice person at school and you won't have criminals committing crime.' It is not that simple.

What has to happen is a series of interconnected changes. My hope is that I will be able to put a paper out in the public domain—which I would be very happy to share and discuss, and I have said this to the member for Morialta before. I am very keen to engage, but it is difficult to engage on a paper that is not yet complete.

When it is complete, I am very happy to engage with the member for Morialta—and, indeed, everybody—about it, but I can say that, in the meantime, there are elements we will be dealing with in that paper that the Minister for Police and Corrections and I have been working on, and I am reasonably confident (and I think the minister would share this view) that we should be in a position to say something about some of these things before the release of that document. But what we will be saying will be something which fits into the high level—

Ms Chapman interjecting:

The SPEAKER: The deputy leader is warned.

The Hon. J.R. RAU: You can put it that way, but this parliament, in the last parliament, dealt with discounts for early guilty pleas, for instance. That is a part of justice reform. That is one of the pillars of justice reform which we have already put in place. The mere fact that it is already there doesn't mean it is not part of the whole structure. When you are building a house, you put the foundations down before you start putting the roof on, so what—

Ms Chapman: What if the house was already full, overloaded?

The SPEAKER: The deputy leader is warned for the second and final time.

The Hon. J.R. RAU: So that's the situation. Can I say to the member for Morialta, because I know he is genuinely interested in this and he and I have spoken about this, I am happy to engage with the member for Morialta about these matters—I know he does have a genuine interest in it—and as soon as it is possible for me to talk to him about particular matters, I am very happy to do that.

It is not much good me talking to him about things which have not yet been formulated or which I have not yet had the opportunity to discuss with my cabinet colleagues, but as soon as we are in that position, I am very happy to brief the member for Morialta and anyone else who is interested in these matters. As I said before, the Minister for Correctional Services and Police and I have been talking about a number of these matters, and we are hopeful to be able to put something before the parliament and certainly before the public very soon.

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