Page 2760 - Week 10 - Wednesday, 14 August 1991
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That is the problem. The Labor Party is not approaching this Bill on the basis on which it was passed in the Assembly two years ago. For that reason I intend to support it and I hope that my colleagues will also support it.
Mr Berry: They do not believe that they work either.
MR HUMPHRIES: Mr Speaker, I heard Mr Connolly in silence. I hope that I will be heard in silence as well by Mr Berry.
The claim was made by Mr Connolly that these powers run against the Government's crime prevention strategy. I have to say that I cannot see any way in which that argument can be sustained. The idea of any crime prevention strategy should be, of course, to make citizens feel safe - not just to be safe, but to feel safe. To provide powers of this kind to the police, providing they are properly regulated, providing the police understand the appropriate circumstances in which they should be exercised, it seems to me cannot run against any decent and properly thought through crime prevention strategy. I would expect, therefore, that the Government's crime prevention strategy ought to make sure that it accommodates these powers, because they are an important part of the armoury of any policeman on the beat in this city.
Mr Connolly also made the claim that Labor was not soft on crime, and wanted to emphasise that the credentials of Labor are very good in the area of crime and law and order. Whether they are good or not I will not debate at this point. I have to say that if the Government, the Labor Party, succeeds in repealing this Bill today, in effect by failing to allow this Bill in some form or another to pass, it will I think very justifiably give rise to the accusation that it is soft on crime. It goes back to Labor's whole philosophy about crime and its approach to the question of crime. Labor's philosophy is basically that the criminals are society's victims; that the hand of crime preventers and law enforcers ought to be stayed in order to protect the interests of criminals and the so-called victims of society.
Mr Wood: That is overdoing it.
MR HUMPHRIES: There is a very large element of that in Labor's approach. It chooses to say that we should pay as much attention to the victims of society as we do to the victims of crime. That is what I perceive as Labor's basic approach. It emphasises rehabilitation rather than retribution or even prevention. I have to say that, although I go some way down that path, I do not think that should ever be at the expense of people who are victims of those crimes. Those people have the first call on any government's loyalty. They should be the first to be protected by any government and they should be the ones who are protected by legislation such as that which we are debating today.
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