Page 3301 - Week 11 - Thursday, 12 September 1991
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alcohol outside licensed premises. Our concerns are not limited solely to that area. So, I believe, Mr Speaker, that it is appropriate for us to consider whether we should review more carefully, more thoroughly, the issues that have been raised in the MPI today. We accept that they should be so debated, but believe that the matter should not be handled in such a way as to politicise the issue unnecessarily before the next election. I have been persuaded, Mr Speaker, to foreshadow that amendment, which I will move later on in this debate. That amendment has been circulated. I endorse it and urge members of the house to support it.
MR BERRY (Minister for Health and Minister for Sport) (5.15): I want to make it clear from the outset that Labor recognises the difficulties that flow from the consumption and the abuse of alcohol. There is no question about that. What we are opposed to is grandstanding. I have mentioned that before in debate. You can almost pick what the Residents Rally is going to do by reading the Canberra Times on any morning. There it is this morning on the front page of the Canberra Times; it sounds like a good idea, so we end up with a motion.
The problems that we have to deal with have all been touched on by various people in the course of this debate. Ms Maher touched on various problems, known problems that flow from alcohol; Mr Duby touched on known problems that flow from alcohol. We all know what the problems are; there is no secret about them. We know of some issues that have been raised by Mr Collaery which were issues that were contrary to law at the time. He mentioned, as a bit of a red herring, the Whisky Au-Go-Go thing. That was an issue that ought to have been dealt with. It was contrary to law and was something that one could not foresee in any of these sorts of inquiries. He talked about there being no exit in a bar somewhere in town. That was contrary to the law and that should have been fixed in that context. No inquiry would fix those sorts of things.
One of the interesting things about this whole business is that, although we are so knowledgeable on this subject, there is no private members' business before the house to address those issues. That is the real issue - whether people are prepared to put their shoulder to the wheel, in terms of developing private members' legislation and so on, to deal with the problems that they know about.
This proposed inquiry is a quick fix. It is a political stunt, and that is to be expected. We are getting close to an election and we can expect that these sorts of things will happen.
Mr Collaery: It is not, Wayne; I am just telling you. I say that it is not.
MR BERRY: Bernard says that it is not. Does anybody believe him?
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