Adam Bandt (Melbourne, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

There are not a lot of strawberry growers in the electorate of Melbourne, but we do support them. I expect that this weekend at the Flemington Farmers' Market, at the Collingwood farmers market in Abbotsford and over in Carlton strawberries will be doing a roaring trade. I think anyone who's seen the pictures on television, in our newspapers and online, of strawberries being dumped in massive numbers, feels for the people who grew those and whose livelihoods depend on them and would shake their heads at the waste, especially when we know that there are some simple alternatives, like just cutting them up, that would mean that those strawberries could in fact be eaten. As someone who has a three-year-old and an almost-two-year-old, I think everyone had the same instinctive reaction when they saw those images and everyone wanted to know that they'd be able to feed strawberries to their kids safely—and of course you can, just by cutting them up.

I think many of us also feel, though, that we'd like to think we've got a system that is capable of dealing with issues like this when they arise, because no-one can stop the actions of a particular individual who's going to do something like this.

I think people would also want to make sure they're bringing a bit of sense to the discussion. If contamination is found, people would probably presume that in Australia we have a pretty good system set up which would mean that there are easy ways of stopping that from being repeated and that, to the extent that there are ways of dealing with it that don't make the problem worse, we'd adopt those. I think a few of us are looking at the last little while and wondering whether in fact this issue has been unnecessarily politicised. We hear the growers say, 'Look, in fact, some of the ways in which authorities and governments have responded have perhaps made the problem worse for us, because they've created a sense of alarm where there didn't need to be one.' I've got some sympathy for that point of view because there is, I think, a very strong argument that this has been picked up and turned into a political debate when in fact it should have just been left to the authorities.

In terms of this bill that we've got before us, the Criminal Code Amendment (Food Contamination) Bill 2018, I actually haven't yet heard a coherent argument that the reason that this has happened is a gap in our law. Yes, it's been because of the reckless and harmful actions of some individuals, and we don't yet know why that's taken place, and perhaps over time the police will tell us. But I think most people would scratch their heads and say, 'Is the reason that this has happened a gap in our laws?' That's the implicit premise of this: that we need to somehow rush legislation through this place. Well, what's the gap in the law? Is the gap in the law around sentences, which is what has been proposed by the government? I'm not actually convinced that someone who's going to sit down and commit these kinds of acts that could result in harm to someone is going to say, 'Oh, well, now it's 15 years versus 10 years; therefore I'd better not do it.' I'm not convinced. If there's an argument that that's the case, put that argument. But I haven't yet heard that argument being put.

Is there a gap with respect to the offences themselves? Perhaps there's an argument that says that, if there's a problem in the law that has meant that we haven't been able to mount prosecutions on the basis of recklessness with respect to harming a particular person, perhaps we should look at that. For example, if it's the case—and I don't know whether it is or not, because this whole thing has been so rushed—that the DPP or the police have had problems bringing prosecutions because the act requires proof that you wanted to harm a particular individual person, maybe there is a case for saying, 'Well, you don't actually have to prove which person you wanted to hurt by putting a pin in the strawberry; it's enough that you were causing a threat to health.' Perhaps, when it comes to those threats to individual people, there is a good case. In an ideal world, we'd have some more considered time to have a look at that.

But this goes a lot broader than that. I just want to place on the record some concerns about potential unintended consequences that come with doing a rush job. So that people know, we saw this legislation at 9.30. We got a briefing on it at nine o'clock and saw the legislation at 9.30. We're dealing with legislation that could result in people going to jail for longer than otherwise, and we're creating new offences. One of those new offences that have been created in this bill is with respect to recklessness. As I've said, maybe there's a case for an offence of recklessness with respect to harm for a particular person, but it goes broader than that. It will now be an offence to recklessly do something—I will come back to 'do something' in a moment—that might cause public anxiety. To be honest, in the time available to deal with this, I don't actually know what that means. What does it mean to recklessly do something that might result in public anxiety? That seems to me to be a very broad question. Perhaps I'm bringing too much of a lawyer's mind to this, but, when you have these really broad offences that are now going to result in jail time, it's a good idea to know what these words mean and have time to consider whether or not there are unintended consequences.

In the limited time that we've had available to think about this, one unintended consequence comes to mind. This morning is the first time I've had a look at these offences. One of the offences, contamination, includes interference with food, so it's not just poisoning or sticking a pin in something. It could arguably extend to someone who goes into, say, an abattoir because they think the processes that are being conducted in that abattoir are wrong and they want to draw public attention to it. They say, 'No, you can't slaughter this animal in this particular way.' They want to draw public attention to it in a way, for example, that we've seen some people do with respect to live exports. Some might want to go into an abattoir or a factory farm and say, 'The way this is being done is not right.' Their intention may be to draw public awareness to what is going on. They are doing it for legitimate forms of protest. Are they now recklessly interfering with food in a way that might cause public alarm? I don't know. The problem with doing a rush job with legislation is: when you are talking about people going to jail, are there potential unintended consequences?

Of course, people want to make sure that all our food is safe. That's a cross-parliamentary position; no-one is going to disagree with that. But is the answer to create broad new criminal offences that might capture some other unintended consequences? Well, no, it's not. It gets additionally significant because what we're now doing is expanding some national security related offences as well—some terrorism related offences. They're very serious offences. They carry much higher penalties. We heard the term used really loosely by some government speakers saying that what has happened with respect to the strawberries is terrorism. That concerns me. We don't know. Maybe it is an individual who has some serious problems—the police will investigate and tell us that—but the conflating of that with international terrorism is of grave concern. I don't know that, on the face of it, we have enough facts to say that is what is happening here. But that's the argument the government is pushing to get us to say, 'We now need to create some new offences that will start to include some of these acts around interfering with food that perhaps might just be in the form of a legitimate protest that's taking place.' We now have an expansion of that with respect to terrorism, and an element of recklessness introduced—as I understand it in the short time we've had—with respect to that terrorism offence.

The net is getting broader and broader beyond dealing with the immediate problem. In the time we've had available, which is just a couple of hours, I don't know whether or not we are passing legislation that is going to have a significant amount of unintended consequences. The rush to do this suggests it's about being seen to do something and being seen to do something quickly even if it might bring with it a pile of unintended consequences. For all of us as legislators, where we are talking about people, potentially, going to jail, that should be of grave concern. I want to place all of those concerns on the record.

I've got a three-year-old and an almost-two-year-old. I want our food to be safe. I want our system to work. I want to make sure our farmers thrive. Of course, everyone supports that. The question is: in doing so are we doing things that carry with them unintended consequences that aren't about dealing with this particular issue? On the face of it, in the very short period of time we've had to look at it, it looks like there might well be. I would hope that the government gives us enough time to consider all of these issues in great detail, given the seriousness of the offences. I would really hope that the government allows that and that the government considers the matters that we've raised and works out whether, in fact, we could pare some of this back, so that we don't capture all of these unintended consequences.

I am worried that in the rush to be seen to be doing something we might create a pile of offences in a situation where no-one in this parliament is intending to. I'm not impugning the government's motives in this respect, but because it's happened so quickly we don't have the usual time. I place on the record those very, very serious concerns, because I don't think we actually need to do that in order to address the problem that the government is trying to address.

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