Page 3160 - Week 11 - Wednesday, 11 September 1991
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The bottom line is that there is no reason for people to drink at a bus interchange especially, or to sit around in shopping centres just guzzling drink. We are dealing, indeed, with a very small minority of the population; a minority identified by the police as troublemakers and identified by the people who regularly use the bus interchanges and the shopping centres as people who, when they get intoxicated, do, in fact, go off and commit other offences.
It is all very well for people to say, "We should have more police on the beat". With Mr Connolly's budget, I doubt that that will be possible. It is all very well for people to say, "If these people are committing an offence, the police can go and nab them". But the police have to see them doing it. Indeed, that is so even with powers such as the move-on powers, which certainly address, to a large extent, a lot of the problems we have with street crime.
When one looks at the operation of those powers one sees that a lot of the people moved on do not actually have a tinnie in their hand which they are consuming at the time. They might have a gutful of booze on board, but they certainly are not necessarily physically drinking at the time. You can go through the four police reports which have been tendered to this Assembly to see that. A lot of problems are caused, however, by people who are staying for lengthy periods of time around the bus interchanges, often with the sole purpose, it seems, of getting drunk and annoying people. I have certainly heard a lot of evidence from people around the suburban shops especially who actually can pinpoint certain people who have just been drinking around there and who, they believe, have committed other crimes ranging from assault to breaking and entering.
Indeed, on occasions those persons have been apprehended and gone to court; and evidence has come out that they had just been there, drinking and hassling people. I can recall a number of assault cases especially arising from people just hanging around shops, drinking and abusing and annoying other people. This resulted in a couple of assaults on shopkeepers and damage to property; and the police were called and those substantive charges laid. It would be far easier if people knew that they would be fined if they drink around these problem areas.
It is remarkable that, once people do know that a certain activity is prohibited, they tend to stop doing it. That has been very well proved with the move-on laws. And it will be very well proved if this Bill is passed by members of the Assembly. This is a commonsense matter. I reiterate what I have said on numerous occasions: There really is absolutely nothing in this Bill which at all affects people's civil liberties. If people want to drink, they have ample other areas to which to go and drink.
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