Page 5695 - Week 17 - Thursday, 5 December 1991
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MR MOORE (4.35): I hear what the Attorney-General and the previous Attorney-General say about this. But, looking at it at face value, it still seems to me that there is the potential to make a great deal of extra money out of making a false statement with reference to the variation of a lease. Therefore, there is a great temptation to do so. A maximum penalty of $200 would hardly discourage that. Where somebody accidentally makes a false statement, obviously the court would have the discretion to determine that this was not a deliberate and malicious method of trying to make more money and would, I presume, act accordingly. Therefore, it seems to me that a $200 penalty really is inadequate in these circumstances.
MR KAINE (Leader of the Opposition) (4.36): Mr Speaker, it is obvious from the debate that followed my question that there is not unanimity on the question of what the fine ought to be. I accept Mr Collaery's comment that the penalty may be consistent but it may be too low. There are two possible courses of action now: We can use this as the beginning of a revision of the penalties right across all Bills and increase this one, in which case I would not agree to it going to $2,000, because I think a tenfold increase is probably too much; or we can agree upon the notion that the Government will undertake a review of penalties across all Acts, including this one, as a matter of urgency, and bring them into line with 1991 practice rather than 1951 practice. I do not care which way we go, and I will leave it to somebody else if - - -
Mr Moore: We should do both - make this $1,000 and let the Government do the review.
MR KAINE: I think that a tenfold increase, without looking at the ramifications of it, is a very significant change and I do not know that I want to accept that order of magnitude of change without some justification.
MR WOOD (Minister for Education and the Arts and Minister for the Environment, Land and Planning) (4.37): Mr Speaker, I understand what Mr Kaine says. Let me point out that, if such a false statement were part of a more serious crime, appropriate penalties would follow any action on that crime.
Mr Connolly: Fraud.
MR WOOD: Fraud, for example. So, it does not confine things to that, and certainly I think that the present and future Attorneys would undertake a wide-ranging review of penalties.
Amendment negatived.
Clause agreed to.
Clauses 220 to 223, by leave, taken together, and agreed to.
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