Page 3268 - Week 11 - Thursday, 12 September 1991
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On-the-spot fines for under-age drinkers - people who have forged identification saying that they are Bill Smith - mean lots of on-the-spot fines for Bill Smith and the actual offender laughing at the system. It is a facile solution without quite serious work on a form of identification. This Government is doing some work on that.
Dr Kinloch: Is this a facile report, Mr Connolly? Is this a facile report? Is this a facile report?
MR CONNOLLY: That suggestion of on-the-spot fines is facile, Mr Speaker. Dr Kinloch often asks for protection, but I prefer robust debate. So I will let him interject away. I am pleased that he is accepting the vigorous approach of interjection.
I am presently instructing both the Attorney-General's Department and Urban Services to work towards the introduction of a pub card scheme. It would be self-funding. In New South Wales the card is free, but you have to pay for a colour photograph. If you look at the brochure - I am sure Mr Stefaniak would have them - you will see that they specifically say that the passport photograph for a couple of dollars is inadequate. So, it costs you between $5 and $10 to get your photo. We think that we can get the card for around about that cost.
The scheme would be administered by the Motor Vehicle Registry. It has all the facilities and all the equipment; it is there now. It would mean that persons who are 18 or over and who do not have a drivers licence - and there are not that many; most kids of that age are pretty keen to get a drivers licence - would have access to an alternative means of photographic identification.
Once you have that, you can then tighten up in a big way on fines and sanctions against licensed premises, because you can say, "You must produce photographic identification", and licensees must establish that they have a system of requiring photographic identification; otherwise they will be done for breaches of the Act. So, you really have to get that stuff in place.
This Government is quietly working away on that issue. We have not been making great media statements on this. We are just, as I say, quietly working away on it. Because of the GALA report, the Residents Rally thinks, "Shock, horror, crisis! Let us have an MPI". I do not think that Dr Kinloch was aware, when he wrote this MPI, that his own leader had described the amendments, which went through only late last year, as a milestone of reform. It is extraordinary.
What was a milestone of reform a year ago and what we say should be given the opportunity to work - and they were sensible reforms which we supported in opposition - should be given a chance to work. To have a pseudo-royal
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