Ghahraman GolrizGOLRIZ GHAHRAMAN (Green): Thank you Mr Speaker. And I do want to begin by acknowledging as my colleague and friend Vanushi Walters has just done that actually the issues that are purportedly being addressed by this bill are real for our communities. For those who experience violent crime or property crimes or any kind of disturbance in our lives it's real and people who are victims of those crimes do need support and they do need to see us as their House of Representatives taking meaningful action to keep those communities safe. I say those issues are issues that this bill purports to address because I don't believe—and the Green Party certainly doesn't believe—that this is in fact a good bill that does much to keep communities safe. It does to begin purport to create a new offence of discharging a firearm with intent to intimidate. And as much as we call it a new offence we have to remember that actually threatening acts committed with a firearm are already offences that this bill repeals to replace in part section 308 of the Crimes Act with this apparently new Act. Now is that going to do much more to keep our community safe? It's only an extension of the maximum sentence to five years from three years. If so far we've had so much trouble and we keep raising imprisonment maximum penalties and we keep asking ourselves why it's not working is this really anything new is it really effective and is it fair for us to tell those victim communities that it is new that it is a solution and that it will work? We move on to in Part 2 a part that again tries to respond to conduct which occurs during gang convoys. However this expanded power can actually be used by police to apply to protesting convoys to anyone that seemed to be driving recklessly or dangerously and to say that a vehicle can then be immediately impounded. Putting that together with what we know of policing in our nation and the kinds of communities that are seen as being a threat of criminal activity and without having laws in place that require police to have a reasonable belief based on evidence of actual criminal activity expanding that power that can be applied to anyone—including just reckless behaviour that the police might suspect is to do with gang violence—without an objective criteria that normal police powers have and to take a family's vehicle away then in those circumstances for 28 days that's a pretty big power and it's not connected to criminal activity and it's not being applied to an objective standard. So are we really keeping communities safe with that extended power? Again are we just making ourselves look a bit tough on crime? So Parts 1 and 2 actually don't necessarily apply to gangs. It has that word in it somewhere but it can be used by police to apply to anyone and it does extend powers that already exist beyond what is reasonable. In our estimation it does weaken policing actually because it doesn't require police to meet the evidential standards that they normally would have to meet and so are we really even applying them to criminal activity let alone gang activity? But one of the later parts that actually concerns me more than anything is Part 5 where there is no requirement for a belief that cash is an instrument of crime but only that a suspicion is there. So we're then talking about pretty broad powers of police to take away again people's property in circumstances where we've taken away any requirement that they have and that they have to meet an objective evidential standard that we normally have in our laws that an actual crime might have happened. So are we really ensuring that our police as a front-line institution entrusted to keep our communities safe are actually doing that? Or is this a revenue-gathering exercise? Or is it again another power that we're giving our police force in order to stand in this House and say that we're doing something about what concerns our communities?Again we have to read this bill and look at these expanded powers that aren't about evidence-based policing and put them together with all of the research that our Government last term actually commissioned—all that independent research that's just sitting there—that says that police when their powers are expanded are exercising them against certain communities and those communities don't necessarily fall into the category of people actually committing crimes actually making our communities less safe?It's policing without legal standards that we recognise normally in our system which then by definition is tyranny. It's not keeping communities safe; it's just police powers that can be exercised with prejudice. Again and I hate to say this in this House too many times in one night but the most heartbreaking thing about introducing a bill like this that does so little but lowers standards is that again we know what actually stops violent crime. We know what stops our young people from joining gangs; we know that 89 percent of under-19-year-olds that we lock up that commit what we call serious crimes"—serious enough that they get locked up—actually then get diagnosed with a serious learning disability. So inclusive education is a means of keeping people—young people—out of gangs. Are we investing in that? No.Mental health care; addiction treatment that's accessible and inclusive; housing; incomes that are livable. If we want to ask ourselves why—if the stats are to be believed—violent crime has gone up by so much among young people in particular over the past year then let's look at what we know prevents crime that might have also gone up over the past year. That's inequality and it's a mental health crisis. Instead we're providing more police powers—more police powers that can be used in amorphous circumstances like this without even the objective standard of belief that the crime has happened.So this is a bad law and it's a bad direction that I feel sad about with the Labour-led Government. But hopefully as this right side of the House has said it looks forward to October I think that I can say confidently that with a bigger Green heart in Government we'll do a lot more with justice that's effective and actually keeps communities safe and inclusive next term."