Page 1594 - Week 06 - Wednesday, 12 August 1992
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MR KAINE: If you have your mind closed, Mr Lamont, you might as well leave and not take part in the debate. You clearly have your mind closed; you do not want to hear any argument against your Bill that arbitrarily imposes these things. I can only assume that you think you have the numbers tied up and you do not want to hear what anybody on this side of the house has to say at all. You just want us to vote on the thing lock, stock and barrel and give you the lot. I submit that that is unreasonable on your part. I would have hoped that you would have been prepared to listen to some debate and to listen to a counter argument.
I submit that in many cases these fines are excessive. The possibility of a $10,000 fine and a year in gaol - not or; and - is a very heavy penalty. If you look to other Acts, they are penalties of an order of magnitude that does not apply to things that people do to each other. An animal, presumably, by your scale of values, is worth more than a human being. That is what I am suggesting to you, Mr Lamont. Go and look at the types of offences and the scales of penalties in other Acts and then make a judgment about whether this is reasonable. I am saying to you that I do not think it is. If you are going to adopt this, the option might be to go through all of those other Acts and increase the penalties to two, three, four or five times what these are. You would not get off the starting blocks if you tried to do that.
Let us have a sensible debate. Let us have some reason and logic and rationality in the debate; do not sit there with a closed mind saying, "I do not want to hear what you have to say because, whatever you say, I am going to be totally uninfluenced by it". Madam Speaker, I think that the level of penalty in this case, and in many others, is excessive.
MR CONNOLLY (Attorney-General, Minister for Housing and Community Services and Minister for Urban Services) (4.36): Madam Speaker, that was a fine impassioned speech on the draconian level of penalties in the Bill. We were called upon passionately to compare this with existing penalties and make our judgment, and to compare it with penalties in other Acts. That argument unfortunately is flawed by the fact that the maximum penalty under the existing law is two years' imprisonment.
Mr Kaine: That is too much too. If you are going to amend it, amend it decently.
MR CONNOLLY: Madam Speaker, this rhetoric that the Liberal Party is whipping up, that it is absolutely draconian and appalling and impossible to have a one-year period of imprisonment as a maximum penalty, is fundamentally flawed by the fact that under the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act 1959 there is an offence of aggravated cruelty which carries a two-year penalty.
Mr Humphries: That is different. And the fine?
MR CONNOLLY: There is a lower fine - $1,000. Mr Kaine also said, "Perhaps you should review all the other Acts". Again, Mr Kaine does not listen or does not understand, because in question time today I said that that is exactly what the Government is doing. That is exactly what the Government is doing, Madam Speaker, because penalties in a range of ACT Acts often are quite inappropriate. Indeed, I have had drawn to my attention this afternoon that under a regulation under the Mining Act in the ACT - fortunately, there is not
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