Page 1430 - Week 05 - Wednesday, 17 April 1991
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MR COLLAERY: It is appalling to sit here opposite such a juvenile group who purport to understand the machinery of government.
Mr Speaker, the children's services legislation has accepted by repatriation a lot of the criminal-type provisions from the Crimes Act and other provisions in recent years. We are sending those controls down to the children's services legislation because we believe that the laws in respect of young people, including, in my view, drug and alcohol affected young people, should be dealt with in that context. They should not be lumped in with "persons" and dragged off to police stations.
Then there is the other issue: Should we provide this service just for walk in off the street drunks looking to be accommodated? Will medical assistance be available? What powers and obligations under police regulations and the like should we put into legislation or regulations thereto, to deal with rights to medical examination, and medical access and all the rest? Finally - through you, Mr Speaker - Mr Berry, how will inmates be regularly monitored vis-a-vis the recommendations of the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody?
I suggest to the house that we simply have more work to do on the matter. Mr Berry scored his point. When we endorsed the idea of a proclaimed place nothing appeared in the media. We did it; it is in Hansard, but that is our record. When Mr Berry introduced his Bill he got the public credit from organisations, a number of whom have sent me messages saying that they strongly support Mr Berry's legislation. Clearly, there is strong support for this type of legislation, but I point out that the Bill itself is deficient. There are wider policy issues to consider at the moment.
Mr Berry: What are they?
MR COLLAERY: I have just enumerated them while the members of the front bench of the Opposition were giggling and laughing and trying to make fun of this speech.
So, we will adjourn this debate and the debate will be taken up in the context of those challenges I have mentioned. When the debate resumes, the house will be afforded a view from the health and medical, drug and alcohol aspects of what the challenge is here. I expect that when Mr Humphries returns to this Assembly he will adjourn the debate.
I have already alluded to the other issues that Mr Berry's Bill deals with. We need to think again about empowering the police in the manner in which they are empowered. They did inform me that they did not need the breadth of that power which subsists in the Crimes Act and which is replicated in Mr Berry's Bill. Obviously, for political
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