Police liable under Kidnap Bill

The Senate on Tuesday night passed the Kidnapping Bill 2003 with a tough mandatory minimum sentence which allows no judicial discretion to vary the sentence for the specific offence of kidnapping for ransom. There was much concern that the blanket mandatory 25 years sentence would inhibit persons who aid and abet kidnapping from pleading guilty in the expectation of a lesser sentence in return for turning State’s evidence. The Bill also overturns several traditional legal conventions. Clause 9 imposes a legal duty on anyone who knows about a kidnapping to report it to the police, although normally the law does not usually punish anyone for a failure to act if under no prior obligation to do so. Anyone failing to do so is liable to fine and imprisonment. A significant new clause added to the Bill on Tuesday punishes police officers who fail to duly investigate a reported kidnapping.

Clause 9(4) states that a police officer who receives information and who does not investigate in accordance with proper police procedure commits an offence and is liable on summary conviction to a fine of $100,000 and imprisonment of two years. Opposition Senator Wade Mark had urged a 10-year penalty, unsuccessfully. His colleague Arnim Smith claimed: “There are widespread rumours that the police are part of the problem...People are saying the police are involved...People are afraid to give information to the police who will give it to others.”
Due to the Opposition’s lack of support for a parliamentary special majority required for bills breaching the national constitution, the Bill did not seek to ban bail.