Scott Ludlam (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I will not seek to pursue this matter any further except to say that I would completely agree with every single word that Senator Parry just said in his reasons for opposing the amendment. We are not seeking to promote material that incites terrorism. I am hoping I am not going to have to repeat myself as we move every single one of these amendments. It is not what this is about. The fact here is that we have quite radically changed the burden of proof as to what could be considered offensive material if we consider that someone very young, someone very impressionable, someone with a completely different cultural background or someone with any kind of mental impairment at all could be persuaded to commit some kind of hypothetical act on the viewing of this material. I think we have quite grievously and unnecessarily expanded the range of material to include stuff that in no way could be considered to be inciting of terrorism. Senator Parry, I completely agree with your comments, but I do not think it was an argument against this particular amendment. Without further delay, I commend amendment (16) to the chamber.

Question negatived.

by leave—I move amendments (21) and (22) on sheet 6181:

(21)  Schedule 3, item 10, page 22 (line 16), omit “reasonably suspects”, substitute “believes on reasonable grounds”.

(22)  Schedule 3, item 16, page 27 (line 19), omit “reasonably suspects”, substitute “believes on reasonable grounds”.

These two amendments regard the state of mind of the arresting officer. There is an inconsistency here between the state of mind required by a police officer to arrest a person without a warrant and required to continue to hold the person under arrest. Senators might consider this to be somewhat technical, but I think it is quite important. Section 3W(1) of the Crimes Act provides that an arresting officer must ‘believe on reasonable grounds’ that                     a person has committed an offence. This is inconsistent with section 23C(2)(b) and proposed section 23D(b) whereby an arresting officer needs to only ‘reasonably suspect’—that is the distinction I am drawing—that the accused committed an offence other than for which they were initially arrested. That is not the offence for which they were originally arrested but something else that a suspicion forms post arrest.

It was held in the case of George v Rockett (1990) 170 CLR 104 that a reasonable suspicion is a lower threshold than reasonable belief. That is the distinction I am drawing here. There does not appear to be any reason for this inconsistency and we therefore propose that proposed section 23DB(2)(b) be amended to refer to a belief on reasonable grounds—so this is doing nothing more than providing consistency—and also that a clause be inserted into the bill that amends section 23C(2)(b) consequentially. That is all these two amendments seek to do.