Page 5305 - Week 17 - Thursday, 13 December 1990
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bring us more into line, again, with the other States because our fines for drink-driving do tend to be considerably lower than those of surrounding New South Wales and those of other States. I think we might see a nice little positive spin-off there. All of this, of course, contributes to road safety.
The other aspects in the Bill which Mr Collaery and my colleague Mrs Nolan and, indeed, Mr Connolly have mentioned also contribute generally to the cause of road safety. Mrs Nolan alluded to a number of people who will now be caught by this provision but who otherwise would not have been. In the report she referred to in the paper, there were some figures given. The figure of 34 springs to mind as the number of people charged by the police, but the number of people who, in fact, blew between .05 and .08 on that weekend and who had to be let go under our current legislation was about 150 - a very large number. Those people will, of course, now be caught and they will receive an infringement notice. They will have to pay a $500 fine. Our roads can only be safer because of this legislation. I commend the Attorney-General and the Government for bringing it in, as I commend the State governments and the Commonwealth Government who have been involved in this 10-point initiative.
MR COLLAERY (Attorney-General) (11.03), in reply: I thank members for their remarks. There are one or two technical points that my advisers have given me to respond to. I will come to those. The general comments are, of course, that we, as an Assembly, are sending a strong message to the community that it cannot drink and drive, and if you are on the .02, limit in my view, you simply cannot even contemplate drinking and driving. That is a particularly strong message to young people.
I think it was Mr Connolly who said that, perhaps, all novice drivers should be subject to .02 and not only those under 25. It has been pointed out to me that, when provisional licences are introduced as part of the graduated licence scheme that my colleague, Mr Duby, has already mentioned, all provisional licence holders will be automatically subject to .02. That should extrapolate, I guess, logically, though not syllogistically, to all novice drivers being on .02. We are also bringing our blood alcohol limits into line with those in other States, particularly New South Wales. That is particularly significant and sensible, given our close proximity. I remember, when I was in practice, actually having a client who had been breath tested in Canberra Avenue and had been clear but had later been picked up somewhere in Queanbeyan as he was dropping someone off from late duty - interestingly, from Parliament House.
I would really like to put this in a sealed envelope and hand it to you, Mr Clerk, so that no-one will say later that they did not know. There are going to be, for about a year, some potentially interesting situations where it is
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