Tasmanian Attorney-General Elise Archer has once again caused consternation, this time over the apparent failure to fund Legal Aid Tasmania for high-risk prisoner declarations under her brand-new statutory scheme.
Appearing in the Supreme Court for the ancient Tasmanian penal practice of general gaol delivery (i.e., most of the remandees appear in quick succession), Nathan Michael Green was confronted with an application by the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) to make him subject to a high-risk offender order. Legal Aid Tasmania’s in-house counsel applied for an adjournment on the basis that there was no funding allocated for Green — or indeed anyone else — to be represented on such an application.
While Tasmania has long had dangerous prisoner declarations, which essentially allow inmates to be detained indefinitely, Elise Archer successfully convinced Tasmania’s Parliament that an overhaul of the system was warranted. Part of the rationale was that once in place, dangerous prisoner declarations were notoriously difficult to dislodge, and that a new type of order deeming someone to be a high-risk offender was necessary to continue to restrain their liberty after their sentence is complete, requiring them to, for instance, comply with curfews, electronic geolocation monitoring, and even random body searches by police.
The most well-known recipient of the dangerous prisoner award was Mark Brandon “Chopper” Read in 1993, who is reputed to have coined the standard Risdon Prison expression “getting the key” for winning the honour, and who took three attempts to discharge his own declaration.
It is not known why Liberal MP Archer pressed the legislation through Parliament at breakneck speed, only to create a delay by not funding Tasmanian Legal Aid to deal with the inevitable consequence of the DPP making applications under the new law. Hobart wags speculate that it has something to do with beating Tasmanian Labor around the head with her prized “law and order stick”.
It is understood that Tasmanian Legal Aid will try to overcome the problem in the way it always does — by cutting everyone else’s rations a little more. At some point, the local profession probably will march on the Executive Building in protest, but until then it appears to be conserving its energy.
The attorney-general did not respond to a request for comment.
