Nick McKim (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I appreciate the guidance from you, Chair, and from the Attorney with regard to nomenclature. Attorney, I am drawing your attention to the fact that the proposed new subsection applies a burden on the AFP to do a certain thing—in this case, to:

(a)   serve the revocation or variation personally on the person; and

(b)   if the person is 14 to 17 years of age—take reasonable steps to serve a copy of the revocation or variation personally on at least one parent or guardian of the person.

I will just draw your attention to the fact that that subsection merely relies on the words, 'as soon as practicable', and actually does not apply, for example, a four-hour time frame. The point I was making earlier is that this legislation appears to burden, in some circumstances, a person to whom a control order applies to a greater degree than it burdens, in other circumstances, the AFP. It seems as if the AFP can simply do something as soon as is practicable, but when it applies a burden to a person to whom a control order applies then you have gone the next step and applied the deadline, if you like, of four hours. I am just making that observation and offering you the opportunity to provide an explanation to the Senate as to why those two different approaches have been applied.