Page 4702 - Week 16 - Wednesday, 28 November 1990
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introduced the Bill on 2 May. We have tabled other reports in this Assembly without request. Mr Speaker, this is a churlish response. It is unusual for Mr Wood to take that line.
The Labor Party's view on this is clear - it has an ideological objection to the move-on Bill. When it was introduced by Mr Stefaniak as a private member, it was amended quite considerably. Indeed, a select committee of this Assembly examined some of the issues that Mr Connolly, in his natural, youthful vigour, has resuscitated for this Assembly. I believe that Mr Connolly referred to section 546A of the Crimes Act, which allows people to be arrested, as he conceded, for offensive and insulting words, manners and the rest. I do not know whether he referred to the other provision, in the Protection of Property Act, section 10 or 11 as I recall it; but that, again, provides for an extreme penalty for youthful indiscretion.
The fundamental difference that I have with the Labor Party on that is that I have been there for many years defending these people, often losing because there is no other witness but the police.
Mr Berry: More often.
MR COLLAERY: More often losing, yes. It is a very difficult task. Mr Speaker, section 546A is one of the most vexed provisions in our criminal code. It allows a policeman who believes that he has been insulted to arrest someone.
One of the last matters that I handled involved the son of someone who is well known in this house, who had been arrested for saying some insulting words to a policeman outside the Ainslie Football Club. No-one else was present but his peers and young constables. In the evidence of the three constables one conceded that my client had used a word that he often heard in his police station and he did not find it offensive. Nevertheless, the magistrate convicted this youngster. He found the charge proven on the basis that it offended him. It was a misreading of the law because the test should be what offends the public. Nevertheless, despite the fact that 20 years ago in South Australia Mr Justice Zelling found that a provision like section 546A, which allowed the police constabulary to impose their concept of insulting language on the populace, was something that we did not need in modern criminal codes, Mr Connolly is accepting and endorsing it and endorsing the fact that he believes that the correct process is to arrest people.
I fundamentally agree with this approach, Mr Speaker. There has to be a balance. I have asked the police to monitor it very carefully, to see whether, since we brought in this move-on power, there has been a diminution in the numbers of arrests for offensive behaviour, which is the section 546A-like offence. According to the document that
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