Monday 10^th March 2008

Rev Nile Supports Anti-Spiking Bill

The Rev Fred Nile, Leader of the Christian Democratic Party, has strongly supported legislation that will make it a criminal offence to spike food and alcohol. Rev Nile gave the following address in State Parliament:

“The Christian Democratic Party Supports the Crimes Amendment (Drink and Food Spiking) Bill 2008. The bill introduces a new summary offence for drink and food spiking, and modernises existing offences relevant to drink spiking to ensure that they apply to alcohol. The bill implements a model drink and food spiking offence developed by the Model Criminal Law Officers' Committee. The bill provides the following information about the new offence:

The offence is committed if the offender causes another person to be given or to consume drink or food containing an intoxicating substance (or more of any such substance than the other person would expect it to contain) in circumstances where:

(a)   the other person is not aware the drink or food contains the substance (or that quantity of the substance), and

(b)   the accused intends the other person to be harmed by the consumption of the drink or food (including any impairment of the senses or understanding that the other person might reasonably be expected to object to in the circumstances).

The important change is the introduction of the term "intoxicating substance", which includes alcohol or a narcotic drug. The report of the Model Criminal Law Officers' Committee, July 2007, on which this bill is based, states:

The Committee has found that there appears to be no gap in the criminal law as it applies to very serious offences involving drink-spiking. There is, for example, no sensible reason why the existing law on homicide cannot deal satisfactorily with those cases in which drink-spiking ends in death. What counts is the consequence and not how the consequence came about.

After the committee considered the issue, it came to the conclusion that a gap existed in the law. The committee determined that a drink and food spiking offence should be created to fill the gap in the operation of the criminal law at the lower end of the criminal law spectrum and made the recommendation, accepted by the New South Wales Government, which forms the basis of the bill. According to the Australian Institute of Criminology, one of the concerns relating to drink spiking is the underreporting of the offence:

Overall, only one quarter of victims who rang into the hotline reported the incident to police. Just over 20 per cent reported to a doctor while just under 20 per cent reported to a hospital. About 13 per cent reported the incident to bar staff. Forty-three per cent of incidents that were reported to police were reported on either the day of the incident or the day after, while 31 per cent were not reported until at least a week had passed (some were longer than a month).

If the majority of the victims are female, they would sense the potential for a great deal of embarrassment when weighing up whether to report the offence or not report it. As legislators, we should encourage victims to report these offences. Hopefully, through further education this legislation will provide sufficient encouragement to ensure that incidents are reported and perpetrators are apprehended so that advantage will not be taken of other women in the same manner. A report commissioned by the Ministerial Council on Drug Strategy, "National Project on Drink Spiking: Investigating the nature and extent of drink spiking in Australia", lists the number of incidents in Australia:

It is roughly estimated that between 3000 and 4000 suspected incidents of drink spiking occurred across Australia [in one year]

Approximately one third of incidents are estimated to have been associated with sexual assault.

About five per cent of incidents reported to the Hotline involved robbery while three per cent of incidents reported to police involved robbery.

Between 15 and 19 suspected drink spiking incidents are estimated to have occurred per 100,000 persons

That investigation confirmed that the majority of victims were females under 25 years of age, that 82 per cent of victims reported the incident to the hotline, 87 per cent of victims reported the incident to police, and that 96 per cent of victims in the Centre Against Sexual Assault House sexual assault data were females whereas only one to two victims in 10 were male. The Christian Democratic Party is pleased to support the bill. Although in one sense the bill may be considered to be minor legislation, importantly it covers the whole spectrum of food and drink spiking”, Rev Nile stated.