The Government has proposed tougher laws surrounding assaults on police, emergency service workers and other "at-risk occupations" today.
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The changes will mean defendants are no longer able to use self-defence as a justification for assaulting a police officer in the ACT.
The new laws are part of major reforms to the legal foundations of police powers in the ACT, reported on by The Canberra Times in August.
Police Minister Simon Corbell said the current law contained an unacceptable loophole allowing defendants to justify an assault on a police officer by arguing that their arrest was unlawful.
"This bill overrides the common law, which currently allows people to claim self-defence when they assault police in the course of an arrest or while under police restraint," Mr Corbell said.
"This bill means that a defendant would not be able to claim self-defence if they assault police where the arrest or restraint by police is lawful or the police have acted in good faith and used reasonable force."
Chief Police Officer Roman Quaedvlieg had expressed serious concerns about the increasing severity of attacks on police officers to a Legislative Assembly committee in November.
He said that although the number of assaults on police had held steady over the last five years, "mobbing assaults" and violence fuelled by the drug ice were becoming an increasing concern.
The laws, proposed by the ACT Government today, will still allow self-defence to be used as justification where the defendant is protecting themselves against an assault or an imminent assault by an officer.
Laws for assaults on emergency service workers, care workers, bus drivers and nurses have also been strengthened. The amendments mean that a court would need to consider whether an assault victim works in an at-risk occupation, such as an intensive care paramedic, when sentencing an offender.
"These changes will ensure that a sentencing court must have regard to whether the victim was, at the time of the offence, providing a service to the public which placed them at increased risk," Mr Corbell said.