Page 4701 - Week 16 - Wednesday, 28 November 1990
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
of 700 people had been moved on. If the alternative approach had been adopted, of the police using the existing law and in effect cautioning persons who were seen to be offending, no-one would suggest that 700 would have been so dealt with. A much smaller number of people would have come into contact with police.
We are talking overwhelmingly, Mr Speaker, about young people. We are talking about teenagers, adolescents, people with whom the police are concerned to have good relationships. Statistics show that criminal activity peaks in adolescence, in late teenage years.
Mr Collaery: What?
MR CONNOLLY: That is right, Mr Attorney. I can refer to some papers and studies, I think again by Dr Wilson, about young people. They involve minor offences, not serious criminal activity. It is not bank jobs and break and enters, murder or serious assault; but it is the petty criminality, the minor offences, of perhaps unruly young people growing up. People grow out of crime, which is what the individual study to which I am referring found.
It is those people on whom we are wanting to focus if we are to build better bridges between the police and the community to have a really effective community policing strategy, which I am sure is the common goal of both the Government and the Opposition. In the Opposition's view, Mr Speaker, this type of arbitrary power, this move-on power, is an active deterrent and disincentive for good relationships between the police and the community. For that reason, it should be opposed.
MR COLLAERY (Attorney-General) (11.09): The Government opposes this Bill and will reject it. I think the answer to the Opposition's approach is in Mr Wood's first comments when he introduced the Bill on 2 May this year. He said:
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.
Clearly, despite the mass of information that I have made available, direct from police files, to the Opposition - - -
Mr Wood: Under pressure.
MR COLLAERY: Not under pressure at all, Mr Speaker.
Mr Wood: It came out on the day I spoke, did it not?
MR COLLAERY: Through you, Mr Speaker: Mr Wood, as your colleague read out, the report had come to me in April, shortly before I signed it. It was coincidental that you
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .