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Speaker 1: Rent a crowd. We're back outside Winston Peter's house. Yesterday

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Speaker 1: they ended up smashing a window. This time comes at

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Speaker 1: a time coincidentally that the government is looking to boost

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Speaker 1: the law around these sort of activity. Submissions have just

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Speaker 1: closed on the criminalizing protests near private homes. A Graham

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Speaker 1: Edgeler is constitutional law expert. Of course, he's back with

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Speaker 1: There's Graham morning to you.

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Speaker 2: Good morning.

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Speaker 1: Smashing windows is already illegal, so the new law won't

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Speaker 1: change anything. Is this one of those crimes that the

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Speaker 1: impact on the person is perhaps far greater than any

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Speaker 1: material outworking of the law.

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Speaker 2: I mean, I think quite possibly. I mean that the

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Speaker 2: new offense isn't the particularly serious one you know in

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Speaker 2: the Summary Offenses Act, which is all sort of the

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Speaker 2: very low level crimes, And so I'm not sure this

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Speaker 2: new offense is going to make that much of a difference.

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Speaker 1: If you can't do something that helps, doesn't it. I mean,

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Speaker 1: at the moment, most people who stand outside somebody's house

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Speaker 1: banging a drum wouldn't necessarily know they're breaking the law,

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Speaker 1: and they may.

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Speaker 2: Not be indeed and the game, but equally they may be.

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Speaker 2: I mean, there are offenses which deal with this already.

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Speaker 2: And my suspicion is that the new offense that the drafted,

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Speaker 2: at least at the moment, is so complex, perhaps so

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Speaker 2: difficult to prove, you know, was that the reason they're

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Speaker 2: doing that was it, you know, just all the difficulties

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Speaker 2: improving that the police may just continue to use the

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Speaker 2: criminal offenses that already exist, which kind of have the

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Speaker 2: similar penalties.

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Speaker 1: So if we were looking, so this is coincidental, the

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Speaker 1: Peters thing is coincidental to what the government were already doing.

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Speaker 1: Is this a lesson? And perhaps they've drafted this incorrectly

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Speaker 1: and they might need to. If you were looking to

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Speaker 1: solve a problem, would you do it differently?

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Speaker 2: You probably would a little. I mean, there is some

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Speaker 2: confusion in the way this is drafted. You know, I'm

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Speaker 2: not sure what is covered. I suspect police won't be

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Speaker 2: sure what are covered. And when people aren't sure what's

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Speaker 2: covered and it's a criminal offense, courts tend to err

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Speaker 2: on the side of well, if you wanted to make

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Speaker 2: this clearly illegal, you'd have done a better job of

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Speaker 2: writing it. So if it's not clear, you tend to

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Speaker 2: favor on the side of the criminal. For criminal cases,

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Speaker 2: and so Hopefully the government can sort of narrow this

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Speaker 2: and fix it to cover exactly what it is they want.

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Speaker 2: I mean, it's sort of protests near residential areas. I

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Speaker 2: mean Queen Street's got you know, sort of massive, massive

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Speaker 2: apartment buildings on it those residential areas, and no protests

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Speaker 2: down Queen Street. I mean, no one's going to apply

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Speaker 2: the law that way. The police are going to apply

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Speaker 2: that law of the way, the courts are going to

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Speaker 2: apply the law that way, and so is it really

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Speaker 2: going to do much of anything interesting?

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Speaker 1: Grime appreciate it as always Grime Edgeler, who's the constitutional

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Speaker 1: law expert.

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Speaker 2: For more from the Mic Asking Breakfast, listen live to

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Speaker 2: news talks.

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Speaker 1: It'd be from six am weekdays, or follow the podcast

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Speaker 1: on iHeartRadio.