Annual Report of the President Ian Dearden - AGM 15 March 1995
INTRODUCTION
On 21 February 1994, I was elected President of the Queensland Council for Civil Liberties. It was a job that I took on with significant trepidation. Apart from anything else, I was following in the footsteps of some illustrious predecessors including Derek Fielding, Terry O'Gorman, Matt Foley and Stephen Keim. The last three of these Presidents I had worked with quite closely over the past ten years or so that I have been involved with the Executive of the Queensland Council for Civil liberties, and have admired at close quarters the way that they have carried out the often thankless tasks involved, in the presidency of this organisation.
My concerns were reinforced by the experience of my first 24 hours in office, when I fielded 13 media calls on a particular issue (the drug testing of mine workers) from all arms of the media and from places as geographically diverse as Tasmania and Western Australia. Luckily, things did calm down a little after that initial burst, which has basically been the pattern that has followed thereafter, with periods of madness followed by periods of relative calm.
In many ways, the past year has followed a pattern set by the previous year, where despite a reasonably amicable relationship between the Queensland Council for Civil Liberties and the State Labor Government, there continues to be disturbing anti-civil libertarian trends from various areas of government, with rights and liberties still subject to the whims of political expediency.
In many ways (given the track record of both this Government and the Liberal and National Parties), the Queensland Council for Civil Liberties has presented the only voice in the crowd prepared to put a contrary view on difficult and unpopular issues.
EXECUTIVE THANKS
The Vice-Presidents of the Council, Terry O'Gorman and Paul O'Shea, have taken some of the burdens of office. In particular, Terry has continued to put an enormous effort into dealing with issues arising from the Criminal Justice Commission, police powers and various Federal Government initiatives affecting the civil liberties of both Queenslanders and Australians. Sadly, Paul O'Shea has indicated that his other commitments have now assumed such an importance in his life that he feels unable to continue as Vice-President, and we thank him for his loyal and devoted service.
Bill Ferguson, despite other demands on his time, has continued to soldier on as Secretary, and Betty Mason (our Administrative Secretary) continues to cheerfully and willingly deal with the ongoing administrative requirements of the Council, in particular organising the printing and mailing of the newsletter with extraordinary speed and efficiency.
As always, various members of the Executive have contributed by way of various submissions, and (with apologies to any who have been missed) I would specifically like to thank June Anstee, Terry O'Gorman, Michael Cope, Paul O'Shea, Janet Irwin, Bill Ferguson and Beryl Homes
An essential feature of the Council's operations has been our regular Executive meetings where we get to thrash out our views on the myriad of issues which arise, and I thank all members of the Executive who have made a contribution in this past year.
QCCL STRATEGIC PLAN
Over a number of meetings in early 1994, the Executive of the Queensland Council for Civil Liberties (with the assistance of Geoff Grantham as facilitator) worked together to devise a Strategic Plan for 1994. The results of that Strategic Plan were published in the newsletter of the Council in October 1994, and it was an extremely valuable exercise, enabling us to work out our purpose, our values, our goals, and our strategies and actions to achieve our goals.
The constant difficulty with a voluntary organisation such as ours is that at times those who are involved in the day-to-day work of the Council can become so overwhelmed by the amount of work that has to be done, that it can be difficult to step back and obtain sufficient distance from the problems to sort out where the Council should be going at any given point in time. Geoffrey Grantham's facilitation enabled us to do this in 1994, and we hope to take many of the lessons learned by the preparation of this Strategic Plan into 1995 and beyond.
In particular, issues which came from the discussions leading up to the formulation of the Strategic Plan have led us to devote more of our energies to organising public meetings. We have recently held a successful public meeting on the Criminal Code review process, and we thank Christopher Ray for organising a meeting to be held in June 1995 on the Queensland prison system.
We have succeeded in finding a new, enthusiastic and extremely competent newsletter editor in Alison Smith, who has been responsible for the last two newsletters which have received universal praise for their quality.
We were also aiming as an Executive to program time to look not just at the topical issues of the day but at the short, medium and long term issues that we wish to tackle in the year ahead, and in that respect this report will canvass a number of areas which are quite clearly going to be significant and burning issues during the course of 1995.
THE YEAR IN RETROSPECT
So what have been the issues of note in the last year? Well, in a report such as this it is not possible to canvass in any significant detail all, or for that matter even most, of the issues that have arisen on a day-to-day basis. Much of the work of the Council is reactive and is governed by the actions of governments, other bodies and the media.
One of the matters that we examined in some detail in the preparation of the Strategic Plan was to attempt to make the Council more pro-active, but to do so we need much more involvement from committed members of the Council who are prepared to do the leg work - research particular issues, prepare position papers, and ensure that we have carefully reasoned propositions on which we can make the running. We are always looking for volunteers.
Having said that, what follows is a brief history of some of the more notable issues of the past year, in no particular order.
CRIMINAL CODE REVIEW
The Council has been deservedly critical of the Government's complete mishandling of the consultation process with respect to the review of the Criminal Code. This review, which is the most important reform of the criminal justice system in Queensland in the past 100 years, has seen the Government starting well, and then lurching into a fatally flawed wind-up of the consultation process.
Over a period of some four years, an interim report and a final report was issued by the O'Regan Committee on the Reform of the Criminal Code. After some 18 months of complete silence, an exposure draft of the proposed new Criminal Code was released in December 1994, at the start of the "silly season" (certainly as far as the legal world is concerned). This exposure draft contained various proposed new offences as well as significant policy changes and procedural changes not even contemplated by or discussed by the O'Regan Committee. The source of many of these proposals is completely unknown, and they are presented in the exposure draft completely without discussion or justification.
The Attorney-General's excuse for presenting critical areas of law reform in this way was that lawyers were opposed to the changes he had proposed because they were drafted in plain English. Apart from anything else, this rubbish argument is nothing more than a diversionary tactic of the Attorney-General to avoid answering the question as to where many of these proposals have come from and why he took no opportunity to discuss the proposals with various of the groups intimately involved in the criminal justice system, including the Law Society, the Bar Association and the Litigation Reform Commission.
This Council continues to oppose the introduction of fundamental changes to the criminal justice system being rammed through the legislative process without anything more than token attempts at consultation. This will continue to be a burning issue in the first half of 1995.
JUVENILE CURFEWS
This became an issue in the local government elections early in 1994, when various prospective candidates started running around making proposals for juvenile curfews which were not only in breach of fundamental human rights, but were completely impractical in terms of enforceability.
SURVEILLANCE CAMERAS
The Queensland Council for Civil Liberties continues to be deeply disturbed by the spread of surveillance cameras, not only from the Queen Street Mall to the Valley Mall, but to other councils around Queensland including Ipswich, the Gold Coast and Toowoomba. They illustrate yet again the urgent need for privacy legislation in Queensland to control the use (and potential misuse) of such extraordinarily intrusive technology.
PRIVACY LAWS
The Council has been engaged in an ongoing (and extraordinarily frustrating) attempt to try and force this Government to tell us exactly what (if any) proposals are in the pipeline for the introduction of adequate privacy legislation in Queensland. Queensland has been completely without any privacy legislation for the past three years or so. On ABC television in March 1994, the Premier, Wayne Goss, promised privacy legislation by the end of 1994. There has, of course, been absolutely nothing presented for public discussion right up to the present.
This Council is constantly dealing with issues involving the need for privacy legislation. These issues include such matters as the drug testing of employees by employers and the use of surveillance cameras by city councils, employers and banks, not only in public areas but also in areas such as the Kingaroy toilets, where the Kingaroy Shire Council proposes to place cameras which are supposedly going to catch vandals (and presumably any innocent person who wishes to use a toilet in Kingaroy). Privacy considerations have also arisen with respect to access to computer databases, criminal records, mailing lists, council approvals for the construction of swimming pools, reverse phone directories, police phone-ins for child sex abuse and drug offences, and requirements by the Queensland Police Service on police officers to obtain so-called "field information reports" on totally innocent members of the public encountered by police during the course of their patrol duties.
Early in 1994 the Vice-President of the Council, Terry O'Gorman, argued for the creation of specific criminal offences with respect to breaches of privacy, as well as the creation of a tort of privacy which would enable persons to sue civilly for breach of privacy.
The Council is anxious to make submissions with respect to the proposed shape of privacy legislation, and we continue to be completely frustrated by a total lack of government action in this critical area.
POLICE POWERS
The Criminal Justice Commission continued with its release of volumes on its review of police powers, culminating- with the final two volumes. These are now slowly proceeding through the process of the Parliamentary Criminal Justice Committee, and in due course no doubt to draft legislation which we anticipate during the course of 1995. Again, we will be at the forefront of making submissions in this area.
POLICE INDEMNITIES
The Queensland Council for Civil Liberties became involved in action by the Federated Clerks' Union on behalf of one of their members who refused to sign a Deed of Indemnity when police decided to drop criminal charges against the member who had been charged. This has been a long-standing practice by Police Prosecutors, who have in the past refused to drop charges unless a person signs a Deed absolving the Police Service from responsibility for laying the charge in the first place. As a result of pressure from this Council, the Police Commissioner has now changed the policy of the Police Service and Police Prosecutors are no longer required to obtain signatures on Deeds of Indemnity before dropping charges.
ABUSE OF THE AGED
The Council's Vice-President, Terry O'Gorman, delivered a speech to the Second National Conference on the Abuse of Older People in Brisbane in February 1995 and stressed our support for protection of the aged, but not (as we saw in the 1980's with child abuse legislation) at the expense of due process for alleged offenders.
CRIMINAL INJURIES COMPENSATION
The Queensland Council for Civil Liberties has argued that, as part of the reform of the Criminal Code, there should be a complete reform of the criminal compensation system. The Council has recently made submissions to the Government arguing that there should be a cheap and accessible Victims Compensation Tribunal which should include compensation for offences dealt with in the Children's Court and the Magistrates Court as well as the District and Supreme Courts, and that such compensation should be extended to cover secondary victims including the relatives of murder victims, persons financially dependent on murder victims, and persons who witness or are otherwise involved in suffering personal injury as a result of crimes even though they are not the primary victim of the crime. The Council has further argued that a fund should be established, funded from the confiscation of criminal profits and a levy on fines, to pay adequate criminal injuries compensation to all victims of crime. We await the details of a firm government position on this area, and we will continue to work with the Victims of Crime Association and other interested groups in this critical area of reform.
SOUTH BANK BY-LAWS
The Council for Civil Liberties has been strongly opposed to the granting of powers under South Bank by-laws allowing police and security officers (and ultimately the Magistrates Court) the power to exclude certain persons from South Bank. This appalling breach of legislative standards represents an extraordinary increase of police powers by stealth at a time when the debate on the precise contents of proposed police powers legislation is still ongoing. Despite submissions to the Subordinate Legislation Committee of Parliament, these powers have been instituted and, we understand, are being exercised on a regular basis at South Bank. The Council is deeply disturbed by the implications of the exercise of such powers, particularly as the Government has shown signs of being interested in extending these powers to other parts of the State.
PRISON ISSUES
The Council has actively supported a nation-wide program called "Locked In", a radio program covering prison issues which is prepared in Brisbane by staff of 4ZZZ and broadcast throughout Australia. We see this as a positive step by the Council to encourage debate in the ongoing area of prisons, which continue to be the source of significant controversy in Queensland, in particular with respect to issues such as over-crowding and the abolition of remissions (carried out by way of a "one line" entry in the 1994 State Budget). The Council has been involved in an ongoing process of making submissions to the Corrective Services Commission, who are currently recommending significant changes in the corrective services legislation which it is anticipated will proceed by way of amendments passing through Parliament in 1995. The Council has also been involved in the ongoing lobby of government requesting the introduction of legislation for the international transfer of prisoners. At this stage, this looks like resulting in legislation, both Federal and State, during the course of 1995 and may well see prisoners held in overseas jails returned to Queensland and vice-versa.
FAMILY LEAVE ENTITLEMENTS, INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS COMMISSION
This Council supported the intervention by gay and lesbian groups in the "family leave entitlements case" before the Australian Industrial Relations Commission, seeking to have homosexual and transgenderist relationships recognised as "family" for the purposes of family leave entitlements. It was pleasing to see that these groups had a degree of success in this application.
ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION ACT
The Council joined with various other organisations, including the Environmental Defenders Office and the Wilderness Society, pressing for third party civil enforcement rights to be included in the new Environmental Protection Act. Unfortunately, although such rights were included in the Act as passed by Parliament, in the past few days Cabinet has seen fit not to proclaim those particular provisions of the Act, which this Council sees as a blatant interference by the Executive in the will of Parliament. We are currently (again with the other organisations with whom we have been involved in this campaign) pressuring government to proclaim the relevant sections of the Act.
CANNABIS LAW REFORM
The Council was sharply critical of the CJC report in June 1994 which "wimped out" on cannabis law reform. At a time when the CJC should have taken the bull by the horns and recommended either legalisation or decriminalisation of cannabis, particularly given many of the issues canvassed by the CJC in their Discussion Paper on Cannabis Law Reform, it instead opted for the safe path politically in recommending some limited reforms (which were welcomed by the Council) but basically nothing more than it anticipated would be considered palatable by the Government. In any event, despite these recommendations, we have seen none of these proposals translated into legislation as yet.
ABORTION
Despite the fact that there is an ongoing review of the Criminal Code, the Government is still not prepared to face the issue of abortion law reform. This Council has called repeatedly for the abortion laws to be removed from the Criminal Code and treated as a health issue, not as a criminal issue. The Council has joined with various women's groups in continuing to push for meaningful reform in this area.
SEX SHOPS
In the heat of local government elections on the Gold Coast, we saw proposals to use local by-laws on the Gold Coast to outlaw the sale of any products which "stimulate, or are intended to stimulate, the sexual impulse in any way". This was yet another example of that strange wowserish streak in Queenslanders which seems determined not to allow Queenslanders access to products and information which the rest of Australia finds quite passé. The Council described the proposals as "absurd" and "unenforceable", and pointed out in passing that such proposals were likely (among other unintended consequences) to put out of business most lingerie shops on the Gold Coast.
BRISBANE WATCHHOUSE
This continues to be an ongoing running sore. There have been reports continually of prisoners being kept past the legal limit of 31 days. In 1994, there was a demonstration attended by many committed lawyers outside the Brisbane watchhouse (including members and Executive of this Council). This demonstration did see some short-term relief in terms of reducing the number of prisoners held in the watchhouse (achieved, however, by doubling-up prisoners in prison cells) but, yet again, this issue continues to turn up like a bad penny, with recent reports of prisoners being kept for lengthy periods in watchhouses around Queensland, and the prison system again clearly not coping with the number of prisoners currently being placed in custody.
This will continue to be an ongoing challenge for the Council. Current trends in sentencing, together with proposed increases in penalties in the new Criminal Code, are going to see enormous pressures placed on prisons and watchhouses in the short to medium term.
CRIMINAL JUSTICE COMMISSION
The Council continues to warn of the dangers of the Criminal Justice Commission becoming a "super police force" and misusing its investigative powers. Yet again, the steady erosion by the CJC of the rights and liberties of certain Queenslanders shows the constant need for the urgent introduction of privacy legislation in Queensland to protect Queenslanders against (among other things) the enormous amount of personal information which has been amassed by the CJC.
THE YEAR TO COME
What then are going to be the burning issues of 1995? Well, without a doubt this Council will continue to be involved in issues relating to the review of the Criminal Code, victims compensation, police powers, Bills of Rights (both Federal and State), and the need (canvassed throughout this report) for comprehensive privacy legislation with teeth in Queensland. No doubt, as the Executive of the Council goes through the process of review, which we intend to do at least once each year, we will identify other issues requiring our close attention in 1995.
I thank all members of the Council for their support and trust during the past year, and look forward to an equally exciting and challenging 1995.
Ian Dearden, President
Brisbane, 15 March 1995