Page 2778 - Week 10 - Wednesday, 14 August 1991
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I think it is absolutely shameful that the matter has gone on for more than 18 months. It is only now that somebody who has been through that kind of anguish for 18 months has got some information that they may have been illegally arrested. They may have been in a position where $1,000 surety had to be put up for bail. All those "may have beens" have a very strong impact on how they view the police. Instead of viewing the police in a positive light, as being helpful in a way we would perceive community policing to be done, we get a negative approach.
We have to balance those civil liberties issues against the quite easy to understand concept that the police can say, "Look, move on now" so that we are not going to have any problems there, which is fine; it gives the credit to the police for that kind of judgment. In most cases we would expect that that would be perfectly reasonable and would work very well. But we have to very jealously guard our civil liberties, because if we do not do so they will be slowly whittled away. The difficulty here is just where we draw the line. Whilst I support the continuation of this power at this time, that does not mean that I consider the issue ended.
MR DUBY (12.10): Mr Speaker, that was a very fine address by Mr Moore. Indeed, he raised many of the points I intended to raise in this debate. Let me make my position quite clear. Until this time yesterday I had intended to support the move-on powers and to support the amendment as put by Mr Collaery. However, whilst stating that view, I think I, like a lot of the members in this Assembly, supported those powers with perhaps a degree of reluctance. Fears about the loss of civil liberties, as Mr Moore so eloquently outlined, have always been in the back of our mind.
In the last 24 hours things have happened in terms of information that I have received in connection with the application of the move-on law. Whilst like Mr Moore I have been sitting on the knife edge, I have now decided to fall the other way. The simple fact is that I was quite surprised to hear that in the period that this law has been in place some 2,000 people have been moved on. I had no idea that the level of move-on was so severe. It has always been pointed out that only some 15 people have been arrested.
I would have thought that the figure for those asked to move on would be in the low hundreds. But it has been revealed today that some 2,000 people have been asked to move on in a comparatively short period. That, to me, is a remarkable figure. Other figures quoted, in terms of the number of serious offences that people have been charged with, show a reduction. I believe that they have been reduced from 64 to 24. I just do not know whether those statistics indicate that the move-on law is a good law or a bad law.
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