Sure, I can take it.
In our written submissions, we outline a proposed amendment to the police releases section on undertakings. I think that one frustration that defence lawyers see is that we can legislate all we want, but without larger cultural shifts, larger systemic changes and attitudinal shifts amongst police officers, we're still seeing that, frankly, what is coming out of the jurisprudence is not necessarily consistent with what's being legislated.
What I do think is that the legislation can set a tone so that if I have a client who is on what I think is an unreasonable undertaking, and I have the law there that says this is an unlawful release, I can make an application to challenge those decisions. The courts will then come out with a decision that can then be published in the media. There can be attention brought to show that the police are not following what the law is asking them to do.
Although I think that there are multiple factors we need to be working on, both legislative and cultural and societal, changes in legislation can set a tone that defence lawyers can use to push things forward.