Page 357 - Week 03 - Thursday, 1 June 1989
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would submit that that does nothing to reduce the image of smoking. I ask the Minister whether he is prepared to take action to ban the sale of such products to children in the ACT.
MR BERRY: My position and that of the Government is pretty clear. We are going to take action to reduce the incidence of smoking, not only in young women but in the young generally. If this is a widespread practice, I would see it as encouragement to smoke or to take up eating lollies that are like cigarettes. If it would encourage cigarette smoking, we would examine it in the context of attempting to reduce the incidence of smoking amongst our young. I thank the Leader of the Opposition very much for bringing the matter to my attention.
CAR REGISTRATION RENEWAL
MR COLLAERY: My question is directed to the Minister for Housing and Urban Services. Is it true that she has initiated a policy through the Motor Registry to hold the registration renewals of motor vehicles for those people who have unpaid parking fines?
MRS GRASSBY: At the moment, rather than prosecuting people in the courts, we are looking at what is being done in New South Wales. There cars are no longer registered and licences are no longer valid if the people concerned do not pay their parking fines. There is an enormous outstanding amount in parking fines at the moment, with people running them up and not paying them, and we feel that this could be a way of collecting fines. It has not yet been decided. It is one of the suggestions that have been put up to me by my department to look at. At the moment it is one of the things we are looking at.
MR COLLAERY: I ask a supplementary question. If it was a suggestion put up to you by your department, why then does your Labor Party policy platform contain this sentence, "An ACT Labor Government will make car registration renewal conditional on payment of outstanding parking fines."? Is the Minister saying it has been put up to her by her department or by her party?
MRS GRASSBY: Also that is true in the platform, but in the last week it has been brought to my notice by the department that this is something we should be looking at in terms of collecting parking fines. There was an incident - and the member of the Residents Rally may have read it in the paper - where one of our parking inspectors was assaulted - - -
MR SPEAKER: Order! I think the Minister has answered the question.
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