[Greens-Media] Upper House Committee Rejects "Stop and Search" Legislation

[Richards, Kirsten]

Upper House Committee Rejects "Stop and Search" Legislation
Hon Alison Xamon- MLC East Metropolitan Region for the Greens

The Barnett Government should immediately abandon plans to proceed with the deeply flawed "Stop and Search" Legislation following its rejection by the majority of an Upper House Committee, Greens MLC and Committee member Alison Xamon stated today.

The Legislative Council's Legislation Committee, which consists of one Green, one ALP, One National and two Liberal party members last year began investigating the policy and effectiveness of the proposed legislation, and by majority recommended that the legislation should not proceed in any form.

"Evidence considered by the Committee made it clear that the likely impact of the Stop and Search legislation would be to unfairly target some of our most vulnerable citizens-young people, the homeless, the mentally ill, Aboriginal people, and those from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds.  In addition, the sheer level of imposition on the civil rights of innocent citizens could simply not be justified when weighed up with the lack of success of similar legislation in other jurisdictions,"  Ms Xamon said.

"Clearly this is legislation which never should have gotten this far.  There has been an appalling lack of attention to appropriate safeguards, no costings or provision for additional resources, and no clear evidence as to its effectiveness in preventing crime."

"The Premier has repeatedly made the claim that in practice this legislation would only result in people needing to walk through "electronic arches" or being subject to electronic "wanding" but the evidence shows this to be completely false with no such arches being available, the police having an inadequate number of electronic "wands" and no additional funding being allocated to enable any more equipment to be purchased.  As such all those subject to arbitrary search will be required to submit to the far more intrusive "pat down" searches enabled by the Bill", Ms Xamon said.

"The massive majority of submissions received were against the legislation with only the Police Union in favour.  And a considerable part of the concerns raised centered around the potential for the abuse of power by the police.  As we have seen in recent times, there is already considerable concern about the conduct of some of our Police Officers with their existing powers.  As such, the wisdom of giving even more power has to be seriously questioned.  Certainly the Committee found that the current requirement for the police to hold a "reasonable suspicion" in order to stop and search someone was not an onerous threshold and contained essential safeguards."

"Evidence examined by the Committee also casts serious doubt over assertions that certain rates of crime are on the increase.  In contrast the police themselves admitted that programs and strategies that address the root causes of crime had been working.  Clearly this is where we should be putting our efforts, not in subjecting innocent citizens to arbitrary violations of their rights,"  Ms Xamon said.

"Even though the Committee has attempted to propose amendments to ameliorate the worst impacts of the Stop and Search powers there is no escaping the fact that this is deeply problematic and flawed legislation which the Committee majority determined should in no way proceed.  The Premier and the Police Minister should immediately withdraw the legislation and stop their attempts to promote simplistic, populist and ill-thought out legislation," Ms Xamon concluded.