Potential reforms to the criminal justice system from an advisory group cannot come soon enough for the Liberals, who are proposing to immediately implement changes to bring the ACT system in line with legislation already in place in NSW.
The ACT government's Law Reform and Sentencing Advisory Council is not due to hand down its recommendations until November 30, six weeks after the upcoming ACT election. Any implementation would then incur further delay due to government considerations.
The Liberals' push for immediate reform brings a strong law and order focus to the next election welcomed by the police association, which says any recommendations from the advisory council gives a Labor-Greens government the chance to "kick the can down the road yet again".
The Liberals have announced a raft of election commitments on justice reform and a boost to police numbers, with 74 more police to be added to those 126 already budgeted by the current government, a new station to be built in the Molonglo Valley, and a $5 million upgrade to Woden police station.
While the Labor-Greens government again has delayed the introduction of electronic monitoring until well into next year with a further $214,000 study, the Liberals believe the groundwork for rolling out the technology had been well-established by other jurisdictions and could be implemented without delay.
A separate offence for breach of bail, tougher penalties for culpable driving, a new offence for a coward punch attack, and bolstered police search powers for people carrying knives, similar to that recently enacted in NSW, is also part of the Liberal law and order platform.
Liberal leader Elizabeth Lee said the criminal justice system has to meet community expectations and the feedback they had received was that was "simply not the case".
"No one is going to say that any one of these measures is going to be the be-all and end-all and of course, there are broader societal factors that have to be taken into account, including community and social support through to education," she said.
Labor described it as "just another example of the conservative, right wing agenda many members of the Canberra Liberals caucus would implement if given the opportunity".
The Australian Federal Police Association, which represents the rank and file officers of ACT Policing, believed the law reform council remit was not broad enough to tackle the the issues "end to end", and blamed Greens ideology for an "erosion in public trust in the criminal justice system".
In an embarrassing gaffe for the Greens, MLA Andrew Braddock recently said that adding more officers numbers can lead to police finding more crime and "persecuting people".
Association president Alex Caruana said "he [Mr Braddock] must have watched something on YouTube and suddenly he's an expert in it".
"My members want to be out there helping people but they can't be everywhere at the same time," he said.
"In situations where there are limited police, they have to prioritise jobs and not everyone will be happy."
Persistent bail breaches present a thorny issue for magistrates, who have no alternative to correct that behaviour other than to impose tougher bail conditions or send the offender to jail.
"If an offender can be bailed 10, 11 or 12 times, then clearly the system is broken," Mr Caruana said.
"Once there were quite significant penalties to deter people from breaching bail but we question the fact that people can breach bail 10 times, but the penalty doesn't increase."
He said electronic monitoring could be an alternative in these situations, as it could with monitoring domestic violence perpetrators, as was the case in NSW.
