Claire Clutterham (Sturt, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak in support of the Crimes and Other Legislation Amendment (Omnibus No.1) Bill 2026. At its heart, this bill is about supporting law enforcement agencies to provide efficient and effective services to Australians to keep them safe. Law enforcement agencies play a critical role in the functioning of our communities and of our country and they need to be appropriately equipped to carry out their functions, with appropriate, reasonable and proportionate safeguards as well.

When out and about in my community, I've received some feedback of a general nature that crime, particularly opportunistic crime, is on the rise and that people feel just that little bit less safe generally. Car theft, petty robbery, low-level property damage and general antisocial and threatening behaviour are on the rise. Opportunistic crimes committed randomly and without preplanning cause fear within communities, reducing connection, increasing scepticism and undermining cohesion. Deliberate, targeted crime does this too, just on a much more significant scale.

Cost-of-living pressures, social issues that are still lingering from the pandemic and the development of technology that facilitates, for example, car theft or the duplication of garage remote codes means that opportunistic and deliberate crime is happening and police resources are stretched. Australians do not want police resources to be so stretched that difficult decisions about which call-outs to attend, which offences to investigate and which offences to prosecute need to be made any more than is absolutely necessary. No-one wants that, and this bill contains measures to assist with this.

Firstly, however, I'll go to criminal law. There are many different purposes to criminal law. First and foremost is the maintenance of social order. Criminal law plays a critical role in keeping things in order within a society. As society changes, which it does regularly, clear definitions surrounding what behaviours are harmful and disruptive—and thus off limits—are important. This helps to set boundaries and acts as a deterrent against committing crimes or aiding in the commission of crimes. This makes communities safer and more predictable. It also helps to hold people to account for their actions by ensuring that people who commit crimes face consequences. This also facilitates trust and confidence in the criminal law system because it demonstrates fairness to the wider population. It demonstrates that everyone is subject to the same rules and also limits people taking justice into their own hands, which is a very dangerous approach on many levels.

Ensuring victims receive justice is the second key purpose of criminal law. I recently met someone in my electorate of Sturt who had been the victim of a very serious crime. She had two main drivers going forward. The first was justice for herself—to be heard and to have the effect that the serious crime had on her to be soundly understood. The second driver was to share her story so that lessons could be learned and strategies put in place to minimise the prospects of what had happened to her happening to anyone else. When victims do not feel heard or feel that nothing was done in response to what happened to them, there is a loss of trust and confidence in the police, the courts and all operators in the justice system, and issues and offences are less likely to be reported, potentially leading to escalation and this sense amongst perpetrators that it is possible to get away with offending.

In this respect, the third key purpose of the criminal law is the rehabilitation of offenders. This is important because it offers opportunities for offenders to reintegrate into society and once again become productive members of the community. If the underlying causes of criminal behaviour can be addressed through rehabilitation then the prospects of reoffending are lowered, which is a good thing for the entire community. Through rehabilitation, the criminal justice system is motivated to break the cycle of crime and promote meaningful and sustainable positive change for individuals and for communities.

Fourth is deterrence and punishment. The goal of deterrence is to discourage members of society from committing criminal offences, and the fear of punishment is the general deterrence and discouragement mechanism. However, deterrence is effective only if a person has the capacity to reflect. Because many people commit crimes in the heat of the moment, this is one of the major obstacles for deterrence in criminal justice. That is why implementing punishments and making them publicly known as a form of education is an equally important part of deterrence, because it sends the message that all criminal acts will be punished, that authorities are motivated to catch offenders and punish them and also that Australians, quite rightly, expect this and deserve this.

Finally, the criminal law, particularly the way it operates in this country, is complete with safeguards, thresholds, clear processes, and an emphasis on procedural fairness and the protection of the rights of individuals. Innocent until proven guilty, or the presumption of innocence, is a fundamental principle of the criminal justice system in Australia, and it must remain forever so, no matter what the alleged offence is. The minute we start picking and choosing who is entitled to the benefit of this principle is the minute we turn our backs on core legal principles and core human rights and invite false accusations and invite the state, as the prosecuting authority, to punish individuals without justification.

Our criminal law system, including the measures in this bill, guards against this. Equally, the appellate process, where decisions of courts of first instance are appealable on certain grounds, operate in order to correct mistakes or injustices where they have occurred. The standard of proof in criminal offences beyond reasonable doubt is the right standard when punishment may involve the deprivation of liberty. No other standard is appropriate. As difficult as this sometimes is to accept, it is better to let a guilty person go free than to convict an innocent individual. It is this notion that underpins the standard of proof beyond reasonable doubt. With such a high threshold, the likelihood of a potentially guilty individual walking free increases, but it also makes it that much more difficult for an innocent individual to be wrongly convicted of a crime.

This bill, containing all the safeguards and thresholds as it does, with its five schedules, speaks to the purposes of criminal law and also speaks to the idea that it's important to continually examine whether the criminal law in this country remains true to those purposes, whether it is contemporary in its approach to societal changes, and whether it provides adequate powers and resources to ensure that the criminal justice system operates effectively.

Going to the five schedules, schedule 1 deals with police powers and warrants. The bill will amend the Crimes Act to enable the Australian Federal Police to exercise critical powers at the new Western Sydney International Airport, ensuring a consistent policing and security framework at major airports nationwide. And it will modernise the way law enforcement agencies can apply search warrants and assistance orders to better align with today's digital operating environment, but without affecting the substantial thresholds and safeguards that are already in existence around these processes.

Secondly, in schedule 2 to the bill there are critical amendments to the Criminal Code directed at ensuring that the prosecution of serious drug offences is efficient and effective. This includes the implementation of an evidentiary certificate which allows prima facie evidence of specific facts, normally technical or formal in nature, to be provided and approved without calling a witness. The amendments also change the way drug threshold quantities are measured. The current purity approach, which does not reflect how drugs are typically trafficked, will be replaced with mixed quantity requirements.

Schedule 3, another safeguard, contains amendments that streamline the process for managing an actual, perceived or potential conflict of interest identified by the Director of Public Prosecutions, meaning that a sufficiently senior person can exercise powers and functions in lieu of the director where it is not appropriate for the director to do so because of a conflict of interest.

The Extradition Act will be modernised by schedule 4 to the bill to improve not only the efficiency of the extradition process but also its safety. The amendments provide that, once a person waives extradition, they are to remain in custody until they are physically surrendered to the requesting country or released under an appropriate order, saving time and money. The Extradition Act will also be amended to provide police officers with the power to enter premises and use reasonable force when executing an extradition arrest warrant, reducing operational risks to the police and to the community.

The final schedule is schedule 5, which is a technical amendment to the Telecommunications (Interception and Access) Act. This is required in order to update terminology to reflect changes in Victorian legislation in relation to Integrity Oversight Victoria.

Criminal law is complex. It must be constantly examined to ensure that these complexities are being appropriately managed. But we in the community all play a role, too. For the average Australian individual or business, there are things we can all do to deter both opportunistic and deliberate crime. Some may say it's a shame that things are not as they were 40 years ago, when you could leave the keys in the ignition as you popped into the shop. But things aren't the same. The South Australian police commissioner made this very salient point last week when he asked fuel retailers to implement easily available and effective prepay systems to avoid people driving off without paying for fuel, an offence that has spiked given current market conditions. Prepay eliminates this. So retailers: please implement it. Commissioner Stevens quite rightly warned that police would stop responding to call-outs about this issue, because resources are so stretched.

To the community: lock your doors; use the alarm; don't leave the engine running as you go into the shop; don't leave your phone, wallet and other valuables lying around; take sensible precautions; take simple actions of deterrence. This helps police, and these deterrence actions that you can take make it harder for an opportunistic or deliberately motivated perpetrator to commit an offence, which means police resources can be directed elsewhere, to where the need is greater—and we know the need is great.

This underscores the need for constant examination and measurement of the effectiveness of the criminal law system, which underscores the importance of this bill. I thank the Attorney-General for her work and commend the bill to the House.

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