Page 1314 - Week 07 - Thursday, 24 August 1989
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Mr Speaker, the Bill is to have a trial for 24 months and the ACT police force, excellent as it is, is on trial for that term for this piece of legislation. I was last night at a Resident's Rally executive meeting - where I received no challenges, I might add, and I can speak for the present. A lawyer on the Residents Rally executive - I think there are four or five - an extremely experienced lawyer just back from Adelaide, informed me that, when he left the hotel he was staying in a couple of nights ago, there were a couple of policemen on foot patrol. He engaged them in conversation and asked them how the South Australian move-on thing was working, and they said, "We have strict instructions not to use it except in certain situations".
Also, they pointed out to my colleague from the Resident's Rally executive "no alcohol" signs in parts of Adelaide, signs that delineate certain areas where alcohol is not to be consumed at certain times - they have an annual road race there of some kind - and things like that. They are issues that are quite relevant to the development of the liquor amendments that are sorely needed in this town, and are also relevant to the hype that built itself around the move-on Bill, and hype it was.
I think the signal event of this debate was the proof that the committee system of this Assembly works. In short time, and without emotional debate or any fracas, a three-member committee got down to the matter, heard evidence and covered the field. Not one witness was able to satisfy me personally about the situation of a woman too frightened to leave a refuge because someone is hanging around in the street, against whom she is not prepared to get a restraining order. Many women in this community, even with their black eyes, will not get a restraining order against the perpetrator; they are frightened for their lives. I know those situations personally, from my law practice, and I have had a close relationship with one of those refuges.
I believe I asked every witness, or one of the other members did, how you would cover that situation. No-one came up with an answer. Therefore I draw the Assembly's attention to the words in the definitional clause, that "violent conduct" means violence to, or intimidation of, a person. The word "intimidation" in that circumstance should give the police sufficient power, which they have lacked to date, to tell that joker hanging around in the street to move on. But, truly, the word "violent" in effect qualifies the exercise of that power. The police would have to have some objective reason for believing that violence could result. When you have got a bruised woman and reported violence, you start to move into a situation where a constable has objective evidence. As a lawyer, who you cannot deny has been involved in civil liberties issues in this town for quite a few years, I am content to see how this works for the next 24 months.
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