Page 4723 - Week 16 - Wednesday, 28 November 1990
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measure. Some of you are saying that we have great problems requiring great attention. If we do not have so heavy a measure, what about enforcing the laws that prevent the serving of intoxicated people?
What about settling some of the difficulties of enforcement in the relationship between licensing officers and the police? There seems to be some confusion there, our committee noted. Why is there not something in here clearly to establish what happens? A question for which you might prepare later is: you are going to have greater checks on under-age drinking - that is great - but are you going to be able to enforce them? What is the point of having stronger measures if you cannot enforce them?
Mr Collaery: Do you want a pub card?
MR WOOD: It is worth considering, is it not? What about taking some active measures to promote low-alcohol beer in this town? Let us see some serious measures come up through your legislation to deal with the problem. Let us not get some hit and miss stuff that sounds good and is admittedly, on the surface, popular in the community. What about some education? We have made great strides, in recent times, in relation to tobacco legislation and attitudes of people towards tobacco. Let us take some serious measures, at least as strong as that, towards alcohol and the damage that it does in our society.
Before I conclude, Mr Speaker, I want to repeat a point that I made in my first speech. I said that the select committee had made inadequate reference to the top legal advice that it had received. I thought that was a deficiency in the report, such a deficiency that I simply want to say it again because it is an important fact. Had that advice been taken, the report of the committee that looked into move-on powers would almost certainly have been different.
The ALP is very concerned about our basic freedoms - our freedoms, in this case, of movement and assembly. We balance those up against the other needs, and it becomes very clear that these unnecessary, inadequate, purposeless, undesirable amendments that Mr Stefaniak moved some time ago achieve no purpose. They do not attack the problem, and they are an infringement of our liberties. You should support this Bill.
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