Page 2749 - Week 10 - Wednesday, 14 August 1991
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We authorise the police in this state to do this - extraordinarily, because it is the overwhelming pattern elsewhere in Australia not to do it. If we look across the border, the police in New South Wales have no such power. The police in Victoria have no such power. The only jurisdictions in Australia where there is an express power to move someone on are South Australia and the Northern Territory. Why is it felt that we need these extraordinary powers when other jurisdictions do not feel that they need them?
Mr Collaery: Because we are more enlightened.
MR CONNOLLY: Mr Collaery says that we are more enlightened. I am very disappointed with the Residents Rally attitude on this. I noted a comment made during the last debate because it coincided with a debate on a motion Ms Follett moved, as Leader of the Opposition, on an ethics committee.
Mr Collaery, in criticising that, said that it was an attack on civil liberties. I have that noted on my move-on powers speech notes because it was on the same day, in private members' business on 19 September 1990, that I thought Labor's move-on powers motion would be debated. So, I had my speech notes ready while the debate on the ethics committee was going on. There was the Leader of the Residents Rally and then Attorney-General again wearing on his shirtsleeve his concern for civil liberties. Yet he seems to be prepared to accept a piece of legislation that gives the police what we feel are arbitrary powers. We do not think that that is a good thing.
Mr Collaery: Would you say the same about your South Australian colleagues?
MR CONNOLLY: I do say that the South Australian legislation is bad legislation, as is the Northern Territory legislation and as is this legislation.
Mr Humphries: Everybody else is wrong, but he is right.
MR CONNOLLY: Mr Greiner is obviously wrong. He has never thought to introduce such legislation. Even, interestingly enough, Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen is wrong. He never thought to introduce such legislation. He expressly banned political gatherings - but that is another story. So, to the extent that Mr Humphries says that everybody else is wrong, it looks as though everybody else is right, apart from the Northern Territory and South Australia, and in recent years the ACT.
There are fundamental flaws in the legislation as it presently exists, and that has been highlighted in the Australian Federal Police report. I acknowledge that at the end of the day the Federal Police say that they would prefer to have the powers, and I understand that. I think it would be a natural view of any police force in any
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