While Canberra's lawyers and Attorney-General, Gordon Ramsay, were quick to dismiss the Liberals' call for a review of the ACT bail system as unnecessary, there is much to be said for giving it a health check.
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Liberals spokesman Jeremy Hanson made the call during the Legislative Assembly's first sitting day of the year on Monday, noting other jurisdictions were already conducting such reviews.
They have been prompted by nationwide community concern over the apparent failure of bail legislation in Victoria ahead of the killing of six people in Melbourne in January.
The alleged perpetrator had been released on bail, reportedly against the wishes of the police, a week before.
It has since become apparent that many Australians, particularly victims of domestic violence, believe the bail system is skewed in favour of offenders.
Whether or not that is true seems to vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. While it is not impossible Dimitrious Gargasoulas, the alleged Melbourne killer, would have been allowed bail here, it might well have been significantly harder for him to obtain it.
Whereas Victoria relied heavily on volunteer bail justices until the attack on January 20, the ACT has long restricted such decisions to police in the first instance and then to the Magistrates Court if it was refused at the watchhouse.
Given Mr Hanson was careful to stress he was not seeking a "knee-jerk response" to Melbourne's misfortune, the haste with which many of his critics have dismissed the Liberal call as just that seems premature.
Mr Ramsay's assertion his government was not aware of any major incidents that had raised concerns about bail legislation in the past year is not, of itself, convincing. In a jurisdiction this small 12 months is not a great deal of time for something untoward to occur.
Most important, as far as the community is concerned, even one incident in which a person has been harmed by an individual who arguably should not have been granted bail is one too many.
Mr Hanson, while reluctant to focus attention on specific individuals, presumably for privacy reasons, said he knew of incidents in the ACT that had involved people out on bail. Some had resulted in death.
If this is true then a review or inquiry would appear to be justified.
No bail system will ever be perfect, given the need to juggle the rights of the accused, who remains innocent until proven guilty, against the welfare of victims, family members and the wider community. This means the presumption of perfection apparently made by Mr Ramsay is probably misplaced.
A review, preferably one that gave members of the public every opportunity to detail their own experiences, either as the accused or as victims of domestic violence or other crimes, would go a long way to testing the validity of his belief.
