Clare O'Neil (Hotham, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Justice) Share this | Hansard source

I'm sure most of the members in the House have a similar experience to mine when they go around the country and talk to Australians about what happens here in our parliament. The public see a parliament that's very divided, where we spend most of our time, according to them, yelling at each other across the chamber. That is what goes on a little bit in this House, but we have a lot of legislation that actually goes through this House with the agreement of all the political parties that are represented in the chamber.

It's been quite hard work to get the bill before us, the Crimes Legislation Amendment (Powers, Offences and Other Measures) Bill 2017, to a point where Labor was supportive of it. There were some big issues, particularly with regard to custody notification, which is an area that protects Indigenous rights and Indigenous Australians who have been incarcerated for various reasons. But I have to say that we've worked with the Public Service and the government cooperatively and come to what I think is a good bill, and it's a bill that Labor will be supporting.

The Crimes Legislation Amendment (Powers, Offences and Other Measures) Bill before us relates to a range of changes to our criminal justice system. It includes the Australian Federal Police's abilities to cooperate with international organisations, the disclosure of information in the context of controlled operations, custody notification and the protection of vulnerable witnesses. It's a bill that demonstrates the commitment of both sides of Australian politics to keeping Australians safe.

Schedule 1 of the bill would amendment the Australian Federal Police Act 1979, to enable the AFP to assist or cooperate with an international organisation or a non-government organisation outside Australia in relation to the provision of police services or police support services. In plain English, what we're talking about here is the fact that crime in our community is becoming very transnational. In the discussions I have with law enforcement, they're continually raising this issue with me. Many crimes—whether it is fraud, child exploitation or human trafficking and slavery, all the things that the AFP in particular deal with—are starting to have a transnational aspect. This means that the Australian Federal Police must be able to work effectively with international organisations. According to the Australian Federal Police, somewhere around 70 per cent of our serious criminal threats now have an international dimension. Allowing the AFP to assist organisations overseas is a sensible change and Labor will support it.

Of course, laws are very important to the prevention of crime, but they don't mean too much to Australians if they're not properly enforced. Alongside a commitment to continue to strengthen the law that supports the work that the AFP does, that same commitment needs to be extended by the government to the resourcing of the Australian Federal Police. Last month at Senate estimates, the Commissioner of the Australian Federal Police confirmed that the government's most recent budget contains a $205 million cut to resourcing of the Australian Federal Police over the forward estimates. We're pleased to see a bill like this that provides opportunities for the AFP to do its work more seamlessly around the world, but—I say again—it's not much good when the AFP is seeing its staff and budget cut by this government.

The AFP commissioner in Senate estimates was able to confirm that staffing at the AFP is predicted to fall from 6,448 personnel in 2018-19, to 5,881 personnel in 2021-22. That is a pretty extraordinary reduction of 567 cops over the next four years, and I am very concerned to see the government implementing that reduction. Labor will support this aspect of the bill and the measures it contains to assist the Australian Federal Police, but we do remain really concerned about the ability of this organisation to do work that is growing in importance and, I have to say, growing in magnitude because of the some of the threats that we face as a country.

Schedule 4 of the bill would increase the maximum penalty for breaches of the general dishonesty offences contained in the Criminal Code. That increase would see the maximum penalty go from five years imprisonment to 10 years imprisonment. The rationale behind the change is we believe a good one; it is to align the sentencing of dishonesty offences with similar offences contained in the Criminal Code, and we absolutely believe the courts need the flexibility to give stronger penalties to serious crimes like this. There was a concern raised in the Senate committee process, and one that Labor shared, which was about increasing maximum penalties. One of the ways this parliament can give a message to our justice system, to the court system, is by raising the maximum penalty. That can sometimes indicate to the judiciary that we believe that sentencing generally for this particular crime is not enough. That's not why this law is being changed today. We were pleased to receive confirmation from the government that it will be made clear by the minister that the intention of increasing the maximum penalty in this instance is not to target offenders at the lower level of offending; it is to target people at the very upper end of offending, who would be receiving a longer jail sentence if they were convicted under a similar but different federal law.

Legal Aid New South Wales was one of the organisations that engaged very constructively in the Senate committee process and they were very concerned about this change, prior to the clarification being received. They argued that increasing the penalties for these offences would disproportionately and unfairly impact on vulnerable people being prosecuted for social security fraud. I met with the government and raised these concerns. We are pleased that the minister has clarified that, in his summing up speech, he will make it clear that it's not parliament's intention that the maximum penalty be placed on the lower level of offending for this offence.

I want to turn now to the crucially important aspect of the bill before us, which is some changes that have been made to the custody notifications scheme in the Crimes Act. Custody notification is a crucial way that we manage what is a far too high incidence of incarceration of Aboriginal Australians. Custody notification requirements ensure that law enforcement let lawyers know when they question a person of Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander origin in custody. We know that custody notification saves lives. We're very lucky on this side of the House to have Senator Patrick Dodson, who is in the other place. He has been engaged in this question of the incarceration of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians for many, many decades—for longer than I have been alive. He was part of the royal commission that initially looked into Aboriginal deaths in custody, and the custody notification that exists under Australian law today came, in part, through a recommendation of that royal commission.

The change that has been suggested in the bill seeks to amend a drafting error that was in our Commonwealth custody notification obligations. It came to light through a case that went through the ACT court system, a 2013 case called R v CK. What that showed was that investigating officials under the technical reading of this law were actually not required to notify an Aboriginal legal assistance organisation before they commenced questioning. It became apparent that there was this ambiguity about the exact timing of when an Aboriginal legal organisation had to be notified and whether the Indigenous person had to be held for the duration of their wait for a lawyer. Would a phone call at two o'clock in the morning that left a voice mail, for example, suffice under the act? Labor took a pretty strong view on this. We want to make it absolutely certain that Indigenous people who are incarcerated have all of their rights adequately protected. That's why we sat down with the government and tried to, in a really substantial way, look at amendments that could make this area of law much clearer.

Custody notification schemes can't be watered down, and I am very pleased with the fact that the government has agreed to make some big changes to this area of the bill. Labor senators were able to draft additional comments which outlined Labor's concerns with the bill as originally drafted, and we can see that the minister has made amendments to the bill that will go through the House and that will ensure that absolute notification requirements remain in the bill. I think it's really good news. It's great to have this area of the law clarified.

I say to people again: you see a lot of frustrations in this parliament, but here we have a legislative process that is actually working properly. The government did want to make changes to custody notifications. I don't think there is anyone in this parliament who doesn't agree there are issues with Indigenous incarceration rates and the treatment of Aboriginal people in jail. We certainly, as a parliament, don't want to be making that problem worse. There are many things we could be doing to make it better, but, certainly, we don't want to make the problem worse, and I'm pleased to see that the bill before us won't do that.

I want to take the opportunity to acknowledge the Aboriginal Legal Service of Western Australia, the New South Wales Council for Civil Liberties, the Aboriginal Legal Service (NSW/ACT), the Law Council of Australia, Legal Aid New South Wales, the Australian Human Rights Commission and the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Legal Services for their work fighting for the retention of these important obligations.

I want to say a couple of things about why custody notification matters so much. I think most Australians are aware that there is massive over-representation of first nation Australians in jails around Australia. In 1991, first nation Australians constituted 14 per cent of our prison population. In 2017, 25 years later, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander prisoners accounted for 27 per cent of the total Australian prisoner population. That is a national crisis and a national tragedy.

I'm very lucky to have next to me the member for Barton, one of our nation's foremost First Nations leaders. This is something that we are acutely aware of. We need to do more as a parliament to try to arrest this problem. There is a major issue if a community represents somewhere around three or five—or a little bit more—per cent of our population but a quarter of all Australian prisoners. There is something utterly wrong with how we are managing this area of policy and this very important population of people who represent the oldest living culture in the world. There's more that we as Australians can do to show our pride in that culture, to recognise the extraordinary generosity of First Australians in their willingness to share their culture with us, but we need to change the tone of how we've approached this problem. To see issues like Indigenous incarceration get worse over the last 25 years—and get worse when so many people have, I think, with full hearts tried to address some of these issues—means we really need to stop and have a think about how we're doing things.

One of the things that I know the member for Barton has been showing huge leadership on, nationally and within our caucus, is the importance of giving Indigenous Australians a voice in the national conversation about issues that affect them. When I look at the problem of Indigenous incarceration, when I look at some of the other issues that First Nations people face, I see that we must provide the leadership this community needs—provide them with a platform and a voice to tell us what they want us to focus on and how we're going to work our way out of some of these issues—because what we've done to date is clearly not working, when 25 per cent of all Australians in jail are First Australians. It's not good enough, and we need to do a lot more.

Before I finish, I want to briefly touch on schedule 6 of the bill before us, which would strengthen the protections for vulnerable people in part IAD of the Crimes Act—for example, child witnesses and vulnerable adult complainants giving evidence in particular criminal proceedings. Vulnerable witnesses and complainants are often giving evidence regarding truly shocking crimes. The federal Crimes Act deals with some of the most heinous human rights violations, and often those violations are done to people who are incredibly vulnerable, who are dependents or children. It's critically important that we provide people who are willing to testify against their perpetrators with every protection that we can through the criminal justice process. Labor is absolutely committed to protecting vulnerable witnesses. In government, Labor passed the Crimes Legislation Amendment (Law Enforcement Integrity, Vulnerable Witness Protection and Other Measures) Act 2013. The measures in the bill before us will build on these reforms, and Labor is very proud to be supporting them.

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