David Feeney (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Defence) Share this | Hansard source

The government does not support the Greens amendments (21) and (22). These amendments would change the thresholds in paragraphs 23(C)(2)(b) and 23DB(2)(b) from ‘suspects’ to ‘believes’. So if a person has been arrested for a Commonwealth offence the person may, while arrested for the offence, be detained for the purpose of investigating whether the person committed another offence the investigating officer reasonably believes rather than suspects. Reasonable grounds to believe requires a higher degree of satisfaction of the facts than reasonable grounds to suspect. It must be remembered that police must always have the requisite belief on reasonable grounds that the person has committed a Commonwealth offence for the person to be lawfully detained. This is a strong safeguard. If the thresholds were raised to that of belief, then police investigators would be constrained in their ability to investigate the criminal activity associated with the arrested person. This would not adequately recognise the requirements of contemporary law enforcement.