Chris Ellison (WA, Liberal Party, Minister for Justice and Customs) Share this | Hansard source

It is a very broad discretion because, as much as any police officer exercising his or her duty when they come across someone who may have infringed the law, they enforce the law but they do so on a very common-sense basis. So it is hard to really describe how a person such as an AFP officer would exercise that discretion. It would be according to normal policing work, I would suggest.

In relation to the analysis, there has been no analysis that I am aware of, but we have certainly examined the interrelationship with safe harbour provisions. If you are talking about a formal review—and that is an independent assessment—then certainly the department and the government have examined the interrelationship with safe harbour provisions. As with the existing offences, the new criminal offence regime will not have any effect on the operation of the safe harbour provisions in part V, division 2AA. I think that that spells it out as clearly as it could be. I think that does address that concern quite squarely.