Mr DEAN ( Windermere ) - Mr President, I support the bill. I just want to make a couple of comments in relation to the bail area of this bill.

Generally, the courts get this right, the police get it right when they give bail to those people who they are able to provide bail to with the appropriate conditions. They do that for the purposes of keeping those people out of a custodial position, to allow them to remain free either as an accused person or as a person who has pleaded guilty whilst they are waiting for sentence.

There is quite a lot of evidence - and if I go back to my time when I finished in the police service - of conditions of bail simply being ignored by a lot of offenders. The magistrates are doing the right thing, as are the police, but some accused people, in most instances, thumb their noses at what has been done to try to help them. They were then contravening those bail conditions as if they did not apply. House arrest, for instance, is a common condition for a court or for police to impose in some circumstances, which they can now do, but offenders or accused people were simply ignoring that and doing their own thing.

In fact, it got so bad - and it probably could well be the same situation now- that police where continually moving around watching people who were on bail. If they were given certain addresses to reside at the police would go round late in an evening, after the period of time at which the offender was supposed to be at home had expired, and check to see whether or not these people were at home. The reason for that was many of these people continued to commit crime whilst they were on bail. In doing that, the police did identify many breaches of bail conditions and hence a lot of those people were brought back before the courts for breaching their bail conditions.

I think the police were really saying on these occasions that the penalties that were being imposed or could be imposed in those circumstances were not a sufficient deterrent to keep those persons from breaching their bail conditions. I believe that this amendment doubling the penalties, in a police instance increasing it to 12 months' jail and increasing the fine substantially, will hopefully ensure that the message will get through to these people that if they contravene bail conditions then they will suffer a real penalty. At the least, there will be a penalty for a court to impose.

One would be saying to the magistrates that with these penalties being increased to the extent that they are, the Parliament is saying and I imagine it will be supported, that we want you to impose much more severe penalties to prevent this type of contravention from occurring. I am confident that this will work and that breaches of bail may not be as prevalent with this amendment as they are today. I am confident that it will work well. On many occasions, the police have frowned a bit on some of the magistrates who they say are very lenient with providing bail. But those like the member for Nelson might say that magistrates are too hard.

Mr Parkinson - You have to be very careful not to frown in court, I notice.

Mr DEAN - I think police would welcome this amendment that we are talking about today. The last thing that police want to see - and I am talking from their point of view - is somebody held in custody when there is no reason for that to occur. In their best interests, particularly when those people are family people with children, then they ought to be at home at least until their case is considered and they are proven to be guilty of the offence that they are charged with. I think that the amendment in that regard is a good one and I will be supporting the bill as it is.