Garrett David: Bail Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee Third Reading 
Garrett David: Bail Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee Third Reading 
[Volume:651;Page:489] 
DAVID GARRETT (ACT) 
: 
 Once again I find myself as a new member sitting here totally bemused by the Opposition’s position on a bill. What the Bail Amendment Bill does is return us to the status quo in 2000 after the Bail Act that the former Labour Government had introduced was passed. If one follows that logic the speakers on the other side are opposing this bill because they got it wrong in 2000. Is that right? That is the only thing they can be saying if they oppose this bill. 
Frankly we have had some quite silly comments about its length. Does the Hon Clayton Cosgrove write a 25-page bill when a 2-page bill will do? It is very short because all it does is remove the “real and significant” risk test and return us to a risk test—a test that was put in place in 2000 by the then Labour Government. 
The speakers on the other side referred to judicial pronouncements on the Act and I see in the explanatory note that as usual with judicial pronouncements they were divided. 
There is of course a need to balance the presumption of innocence with the risk to community. That is what bail is all about. There is a presumption of risk with all offenders—of course there is. But I say that any risk even remote risk is too much. The Hon Phil Goff has made much of the fact that only 10 people may be affected. Well Graeme Burton is only one person. Thankfully he killed only one person but he darn near killed three. Those 10 people whom the Hon Phil Goff has referred to are 10 potential killers. One gets bail these days unless there is a darn good reason why one should not. All this bill does is return us to Labour’s position in 2000. 
Numerous tragedies have arisen from people on bail being released when they should not have been. We have heard statistics and I am sure we will hear more in this debate but I prefer to talk about examples. Michael Curran murdered 2-year-old Aaliyah Morrissey while on bail for killing 24-year-old Natasha Hayden. At the time that Curran killed Mrs Hayden a young woman with whom he was having an affair he had 22 criminal convictions including two for indecent assault on a girl under 12. He was released by Justice Cooper who said that a strong case was not enough; a strong case was not enough so he was released on bail. Not long thereafter he killed a young girl. I am more interested in those kinds of examples than 16 percent of this or 10 beds there. Those examples are the things that concern me. The Michael Curran case is not a lone case. I can bring numerous examples to this House and I probably will do that in my next contribution. There are many of them sadly. 
This bill does nothing but return us to the status quo in 2000 a status quo created by the former Labour Government. Labour members in arguing against this bill are simply saying they got it wrong—they made a mistake. If they want to say that fine. I do not agree that they did make a mistake as it happens; I do not agree that they did. This legislation takes us back to the status quo in 2000 and nothing more. 
I come back to the risk test. It is quite true that some people who are remanded in custody—in fact quite a few—are later found not guilty. That is because the test under our law of “beyond reasonable doubt” is very high. But we must remember that despite what is said in the newspapers frequently being found not guilty is not being found innocent. There is no such verdict in our law. I am expecting to hear a lot of figures on how many people in remand were found not guilty. I simply make the point that there is a difference between being found not guilty and being found innocent. I say that where there is any doubt at all—and clearly this is what the Hon Phil Goff thought in 2000—we should err on the side of caution and protect children like Aaliyah Morrissey from predators like Michael Curran. That is all this bill does. It returns us to the status quo introduced by the former Labour Government in 2000. The ACT Party is very happy to support this short and succinct bill which does just that.