4500 Serious and Organised Crime Legislation Amendment Bill 10 Nov 2016 Mr CRAWFORD (Barron River—ALP) (2.57 pm<): I wish to update the House on some >infrastructure projects in the Cairns area. Construction is well underway on the new $25 million Cairns State Special School being constructed by Hutchinson Builders. The first buildings will be the administration, information services and ancillary services buildings and will be handed over in December. Three junior learning centres, an early childhood development centre, senior learning centres, community hub and multipurpose skills centre will also be completed in December. Remaining facilities, including outdoor learning areas, staff centre and landscape, are on track for completion in January 2017. This project is supporting around 24 apprentices. Construction is nearing completion on the new senior learning centre at the Tropical North Learning Academy, Trinity Beach campus, in the electorate of Barron River. The Tropical North Learning Academy is a strategic partnership between Trinity Beach State School, Smithfield State High School and James Cook University. The new building will add an additional 12 general learning areas and is forecast to be completed in December. The project is supporting around 11 apprentices and is worth $5 million. 025 The replacement Smithfield Fire Station is funded through the State Infrastructure Fund’s $180 million Significant Regional Infrastructure Projects Program. It will provide enhanced fire and emergency facilities to Smithfield and the surrounding areas of the northern beaches at an approximate cost of $3.8 million and should support an estimated 10 jobs. Construction is expected to commence in the first half of 2017 and be completed in 2018. There is one project that is neither underway nor progressing at anywhere near the pace it needs to. The Captain Cook Highway is the principal road connecting Cairns to the domestic and international airport terminals, the northern suburbs and major tourist destinations, including Palm Cove, Port Douglas and the Atherton Tablelands. The highway through Cairns’s northern suburbs suffers from heavy congestion during peak periods. The intersection of the Captain Cook Highway and Airport Avenue experiences large queues and excessive delays, particularly during the morning peak period due to the high inbound traffic flow, with approximately 3,000 vehicles per hour and a right-turn demand to Airport Avenue. The intersection has a high crash history with 20 crashes, which rates higher than other sections of the highway. The $6 million airport access upgrade was eligible for funding under the Northern Australia Roads Program or NARP. The project currently remains unfunded by the Australian government. It is consistent with the NARP criteria outlined in the government’s NARP project submission template. It is a central hub between an airport that has over five million passenger movements annually and the booming tourist industry of Cairns and the northern beaches. The federal government has said a lot about northern Australia funding when it comes to road infrastructure. They have left Queensland out. It is time our federal representatives in Queensland stood up to their leaders in Canberra and stopped playing games with our motorists and tourists. If you are going to have a northern Australia roads package, make it count. > SERIOUS AND ORGANISED CRIME LEGISLATION AMENDMENT BILL Second Reading Resumed from p. 4493, on motion of Mrs D’Ath— That the bill be now read a second time. <Hon. YM D’ATH (Redcliffe—ALP) (Attorney-General and Minister for Justice and Minister for Training and Skills) (3.01 pm), <continuing: As I was saying before the break, the task force, in >recommending this scheme, noted that in New South Wales the ‘police officers advised the New South Wales Ombudsman that the powers under the Restricted Premises Act have been used to dismantle 30 clubhouses in its first 20 months of operation’. This again ensures court oversight and can increase the public confidence in the legitimacy of the criminal justice system and minimise appealable error. The COA review recognised that the current use of a Public Safety Order Scheme should be reworked from its current application to participants in declared organisations. In implementing this recommendation, the bill introduces a new Public Safety Order Scheme into Part 3 of the Peace and Good Behaviour Act 1982, allowing police issued and court ordered public safety orders made against an individual or group if the presence of the individual or group at a premises or an event or within an area poses a serious risk to public safety or security. A public safety order can contain conditions 10 Nov 2016 Serious and Organised Crime Legislation Amendment Bill 4501 prohibiting a person from entering, attending or remaining or doing a stated thing in a certain area or at a certain event. A public safety order can be made by a commissioned police officer, rank of inspector or above, for up to seven days. If the order is longer than 72 hours, the respondent will have a right of appeal to the Magistrates Court. The police issued orders will ordinarily be written and served personally, if it is practicable. However, urgent police issued orders can be given verbally and a copy is to be made available for inspection at a police station or on the QPS website. Orders longer than seven days must be made by the Magistrates Court on the application of a senior police officer. The ability for police to make these orders for up to seven days acknowledges that circumstances will arise where it is not practical nor in the public interest to wait the time it may take to obtain an order via the full hearing process through the courts. However, recognising the importance of oversight, the bill requires police to record the details of any police issued public safety orders and to report annually to the PIM, who will report to the minister. The reports will then need to be tabled in parliament, consistent with the approach to official warnings under the new consorting offence. A person who, without reasonable excuse, knowingly contravenes a public safety order will commit an indictable offence that is punishable by a maximum penalty of three years imprisonment. All applications for public safety protection orders will be civil applications. All questions of fact in those proceedings other than a proceeding for a criminal offence will be determined on the balance of probabilities. The Uniform Civil Procedure Rules 1999 will apply to all applications made to the court to the extent the rules are consistent with any specific provisions. Further, the bill provides that decisions of the Magistrates Court with respect to the public safety protection orders will be appealable to the District Court. Public safety orders that are longer than 72 hours in length and made by a commissioned police officer may be appealed to the Magistrates Court. The bill also creates the Fortification Removal Order Scheme. The scheme takes what is currently contained in Part 5 of the Criminal Organisation Act 2009, but modifies it so as to increase its utility and overcome the problems identified by the COA Review. All Australian jurisdictions, with the exception of the Australian Capital Territory, have an equivalent scheme. Of those schemes, all are court ordered except for Western Australia. The Fortification Removal Order Scheme has two key aspects: first, the ability for police to issue stop and desist fortification notices; and, second, the ability to apply to the court to obtain a fortification removal order. The first element enables a commissioned police officer, rank of inspector or above, to issue an on-the-spot stop and desist notice stopping fortification of the premises if they have a reasonable belief the premises is being used for criminal purposes or habitually occupied by recognised offenders or participants in criminal organisations. The notice will be for 14 days. Police need to commence, not finalise, the court ordered fortification removal order process in that time. The court can confirm the notice pending finalisation of the actual order. A breach of a stop and desist notice will be deemed to be evidence that the grounds for making a fortification removal order are met, unless the contrary is proven by the respondent. A breach of a stop and desist order will also be deemed evidence that disorderly activities are taking place on a premises, for the purpose of the Restricted Premises Order Scheme outlined above, unless the contrary is proven by a respondent. The court must be satisfied, on the balance of probabilities, that there are reasonable grounds to suspect the premises are fortified and habitually used by a class of people of which a significant number may reasonably be suspected to be participants in a criminal organisation. A requirement for notice of the application to be given to the respondent before the order is made and that the respondent have an opportunity to be heard is included in the scheme. Once an order is made, the owner/occupier of the premises must remove or modify the fortifications in the period determined by the court. If the order is not complied with, police are empowered to enter the premises to remove or modify the fortifications using whatever force is necessary. A person who does an act or makes an omission with the intent to hinder the enforcement of a fortification removal order commits an indictable offence that is punishable by a maximum penalty of five years imprisonment. To allow for a smooth transition to the new Public Safety Protection Order Scheme, the bill provides for, as stated earlier, the temporary retention of section 60B of the Criminal Code for a period of two years, the re-classification of the offence as indictable and for the removal of the associated mandatory minimum penalty.