Page 1484 - Week 06 - Wednesday, 2 May 1990
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POLICE OFFENCES (AMENDMENT) BILL 1990
MR WOOD: I present the Police Offences (Amendment) Bill 1990. I move:
That this Bill be agreed to in principle.
The purpose of this Bill is clear and it is simply expressed. That purpose is to remove the move-on powers from the Police Offences Act 1930. That power should never have been written into that Act. The background for that action and the thoughts behind it were based on narrow prejudice, preconceived and unproven ideas and entirely wrong opinions. I felt that that was the case at the time - it was certainly my view - but, as I considered the matter and as events unfolded, I came to realise that the report on which those amendments were based was entirely unsatisfactory. That report was from the Select Committee on the Police Offences (Amendment) Bill 1989 which came down in the house in July 1989.
Mr Stefaniak: Seventy per cent of ordinary Canberra citizens do not agree, Bill.
MR SPEAKER: Order!
MR WOOD: I am quite happy to have that written into the record. Mr Stefaniak has made a claim about 70 per cent of Canberra residents; I would like to know where that evidence comes from. Mr Stefaniak will no doubt speak in support of his claim and he might give us evidence of that.
At that time, like other members, I had only read this report. I was not comfortable with it but I tended to accept what it said. Subsequently, I have been involved with another committee looking into public behaviour - a committee that arose out of the previous one - looking more deeply into the background issues, looking at the sociology, if you like, of public behaviour or misbehaviour, as against a more legalistic view that was expressed in this document.
Not only that - I went back and I read the submissions to that committee and I read the evidence that was presented to it in two sessions. I can tell you that the report does not reflect what came to the committee. It is simply not a proper assessment of the evidence. That committee comprised Mr Stefaniak as chairman, Mr Collaery and Ms Maher. It was obviously a mistake that this was the first committee for which I was not nominated, and we can see the problem of that now. As I said, I did not seem to be hearing the same things in the evidence to the Social Policy Committee in the inquiry into public behaviour. There was a different focus, but the reports we were getting were not the same. The whole thrust of the inquiry into public behaviour, with exceptions that I will freely acknowledge, was: what is the problem and where is the problem? That is what we got out of it, and that is not what is reflected in this report.
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