MINDING THE STORE

Shopkeepers and other business owners in NSW are now immune from
prosecution for using whatever force they believe necessary to protect
themselves, their workers and property against suspected offenders.

The Workplace (Occupants Protection) Bill, proposed by the Shooters Party
Upper House MP, Mr John Tingle, was passed unanimously by all parties.

It follows extensive lobbying from the small business community.

However, the law raises concern about civil liberties being brushed aside
by politicians intent on maintaining a tough law-and-order stand.

In this vein, the State Government will also give NSW police unprecedented
powers to fight the war against drugs, including the right to seize houses
they suspect are being used for dealing and to charge people seen entering
or leaving those houses.

Under a package announced by the Premier, Mr Carr, police will also be
empowered to "move on" people they suspect of being go-betweens for drug
dealers and arrest others who act as lookouts or guards for houses used as
"heroin fortresses". The common thread through both Mr Tingle's
shopkeepers' law and Mr Carr's plans to give police powers to seize
property on suspicion is that the onus of proof is reversed.

As such, the changes, real or proposed, undercut well-established
principles in the criminal law designed to protect the innocent, including
the presumption of innocence until proved guilty.

The new shopkeeper law replicates aspects of the Home Invasion (Occupants
Protection) Bill also proposed by Mr Tingle. That became law in December
1998 and gave householders the right to defend themselves and their
property against an intruder using whatever force they thought reasonable
at the time. It not only gave householders immunity from civil or criminal
liability arising from a confrontation but if they were charged the burden
was on the prosecution to prove whatever they did was not reasonable in the
circumstances. Undoubtedly, the public is very sympathetic to shopkeepers
and their attempts to stop being the victims of violent hold-ups. There
have been several well-publicised incidents of shopkeepers encountering
subsequent legal difficulties after they had attempted to deal with
intruders. But the plain fact is that robbery in NSW is not rising.

Although the latest Australian Bureau of Statistics figures reveal NSW has
the nation's highest per capita robbery rate of 195.8 per 100,000 of
population - by comparison, Western Australia has Australia's
second-highest robbery rate, 113 per 100,000 people - they also show
robbery is not rising. It is a type of crime in decline.

In law-and-order matters, politicians are often moved to action because of
popular feeling that current laws are too lax, too soft or have too many
loopholes. Yet experience shows that harsh laws introduced with good
intentions can in time lead to abuse by law enforcement agencies and in the
end produce as many problems as they were intended to remove.

These new laws, intended to meet serious crime problems, must be carefully
applied by the police, not taken as invitations to abuse of power.

Otherwise there will soon be calls, well justified, for their repeal.