Page 4783 - Week 16 - Monday, 25 November 1991
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People have heard about the youngster who was made a quadriplegic outside the Private Bin. I cannot comment further because the matter is before the courts, but I was astounded to learn from a legal colleague on Friday that there has been another such incident involving the Private Bin. This time it was a broken neck - someone was thrown out. This is just not on, and I am happy to support Mr Stefaniak providing some measure of security around these places.
MR WOOD (Minister for Education and the Arts and Minister for the Environment, Land and Planning) (11.52): Mr Collaery used the words of the report of the Social Policy Committee to support this amendment. We have come full circle. This was one of the first matters to take up the interest of this Assembly. Mr Stefaniak and others raised the question of drinking around the bus interchanges and the Social Policy Committee was given the task of looking into those matters and reporting to this Assembly.
The committee did so and it made some recommendations. In one matter at least, the trading hours for serving alcohol, Dr Kinloch and Mr Stevenson had a contrary point of view. The committee made no recommendation about bus interchanges. The committee, looking at the problem, noting the problem, made no recommendation. Do not use the words of the report to support this proposal now. That report said nothing in respect of bus interchanges.
Having said that, I am one member who over a long period has said that we must do a lot to change our attitude to alcohol. That is where we need to take steps. It is a most difficult task; but we need to do something to change the perception of young people that alcohol is a good and fine thing although it can be well and truly abused, that you need alcohol if you are to be socially successful, if you are to be commercially successful, and even if you are to have any sort of reasonable lifestyle. The Australian tradition that we may partake fairly heavily is something that needs to be overturned. It is not a job for the ACT alone. It is a mammoth task to change those perceptions, but we must join with other States and instrumentalities across Australia in trying to do so.
MR KAINE (Leader of the Opposition) (11.54): The case for the amendments proposed by Mr Stefaniak has been well and truly made, and it has not been made on the floor of this house. Mr Wood finally got around to alluding to it in the last words of his speech. Alcoholism and the overconsumption of alcohol is a problem right across Australia. It is not unique to Canberra, and we as a community need to do something about it.
It is all very well to duck away every time somebody comes forward with a proposition that clamps down on it in some fashion. We get the civil righters out there saying, "You cannot do that because that is an invasion of civil rights.
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