Page 585 - Week 03 - Tuesday, 19 May 1992
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I must concede that perhaps presentationally it was unfortunate that we dealt with the two matters in the one Bill, because it has provided some comfort for people who are opposed to helmets to raise some spurious arguments about penalties and cycles and suggest that this is all part of some anti-cyclist conspiracy. The reason why this was brought in in the same Bill was that I, personally, have a dislike of getting into a situation that we got into in each of the first three years of the Assembly where, by December, we were debating the Traffic (Amendment) Bill No. 6 because amendments to the motor vehicle laws and the traffic laws tend to have to be dealt with fairly regularly. I am trying to institute a practice whereby, when we bring one measure before the Assembly, we take the opportunity to deal with a few matters in one amending Bill in order to reduce the clutter on the legislative program. That is why we rolled the two matters up, although they are disparate.
The sensible reason why the Government thought of increasing penalties was that this has not been dealt with since 1984. In that time inflation has moved along; other penalties have been increased. We are constantly being told by the Liberal Party that we have to get tough and increase penalties. Well, here we have one. If the Liberal Party, when confronted with the issue, does not want to increase penalties, that is fine. They are maximum penalties, and that is important. That is very important. These are matters not dealt with by on-the-spot fines. These are matters dealt with before a court and we are talking maximum penalties.
There was some glee from Mr Moore and, I think, Mr Westende when they picked up a couple of the more obscure sections of the Traffic Act, such as that three or more horses are not to be ridden abreast, which perhaps seems a little trivial. The offence of loads being insecure is not a particularly trivial offence. If you have a semitrailer or a trailer with large planks or drums rolling off, I would hardly think that that is regarded as a trivial offence. If we go further down, there are some quite substantial matters here which I would certainly like the Liberal Party to think about before they toss this out.
Some of the more substantial offences are not dealt with by a specific penalty in the Act and so are caught by this general provision. One is the provision that requires a driver to stop a vehicle when required to by a member of the police force. That is section 33. Another is the provision that a driver is to give their name and place of address to the police. That is section 34. Another is section 35, relating to furnishing information to the police officer. Most importantly, there is section 32, whereby a driver is to stop in the case of an accident. That is, in effect, a hit and run, although if anyone is injured or killed you would deal with the driver under the more serious provisions.
Failure to stop in the event of an accident and failure to stop when required to by a police officer are matters that would be caught by this increased penalty. While we can laugh at the outlandish possibility that you would get the maximum penalty for the three horses abreast on Northbourne Avenue, and we can jest about that, I would have thought that there would be general agreement that failing to stop after an accident or failing to stop when directed by a police officer to do so are matters that may be regarded as more than trifling and more than a joke and that $100 may seem to be a little low, particularly when we think that the current $100 was an increase from $40 back in 1984, which probably itself traces back to about 20 pounds. A lot of these penalties were around for a long time.
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