Page 4253 - Week 14 - Thursday, 24 October 1991
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It is a revenue problem also for the Territory, as much as anything else, because we are missing out on revenue. We are also spending a huge amount of money when the court does attempt to enforce, under these very cumbersome provisions, the payment of fines, compensation, pecuniary penalty costs or otherwise which have been ordered. This is a very commonsense amendment.
I do not think it is particularly fair if an 18-year-old is fined $500 and has his or her licence suspended for three months for drink-driving, with a reading of say .175, and a young person who is 17 years and 10 months is picked up for the same reading, is fined the same amount and has his or her licence suspended for three months, and the fine is virtually unenforceable. I do not think that that is particularly fair, and that is the situation which, unfortunately, we are looking at now.
I would commend this amendment to the Assembly. I think you will be doing the system of juvenile justice in the Territory a big favour by putting it in. You will ultimately, in fact, be assisting the kids who are offending, because I do not think it is in their interest if they know that the system is incapable of enforcing fines imposed by the court. It makes a mockery of the system and that is not a very good lesson to teach young people.
MR CONNOLLY (Attorney-General, Minister for Housing and Community Services and Minister for Urban Services) (12.13): I often wonder where Mr Stefaniak and his ilk spend their holidays, because it is not uncommon for Mr Stefaniak and conservative spokespersons like him in assemblies and parliaments throughout Australia to describe places like Quamby, or the remand centre, or gaols, as holiday camps. "It is just like a holiday camp", they say.
We all work pretty hard in this environment as representatives of the public and we all look forward to the chance to get away for a week or so at the end of the year. We hashed last year where Mr Humphries spent his holiday and I am sure it was nothing like Quamby Remand Centre. No doubt there were dungeons there, but I doubt that Mr Humphries elected to spend his evenings in the dungeons.
Mr Temporary Deputy Speaker, places of detention in Australia are not pleasant. I have visited Quamby, as I guess a number of members of the Assembly have. In particular, it is important to go in and have the door shut behind you and be there on your own, and it is not a pleasant experience. There is no doubt that the remand centre out at Belconnen is one of the least pleasant places in Australia in which to be incarcerated. Having been in Sydney recently and spent some hours out at the Bay, I think I would rather be incarcerated at the Bay than at the remand centre. Places of detention, places of imprisonment, are not holiday camps. They are not places where anyone would elect to go.
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