Page 1613 - Week 06 - Wednesday, 12 August 1992
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I appeal to you, Minister, to consider whether this is appropriate. Surely it is not. Let us put that penalty in subclause (2) because there there is still a penalty attached to it. There it is reasonable for somebody's offence, somebody's omission in those circumstances, to be punished by that level of offence. But let us not make laws which are there to be broken. They will be broken. Some poor person is going to get caught by this one day and the offence is going to be punished unreasonably because they did not know what was going on. This sort of provision is unduly harsh in those circumstances.
MR WOOD (Minister for Education and Training, Minister for the Arts and Minister for the Environment, Land and Planning) (5.47): Madam Speaker, I do not think Mr Humphries reads the words in this clause in their full detail. I think there is adequate protection here for your touring motorist or whomever. It reads:
A person ... shall not, without reasonable excuse -
I have mentioned that before -
... fail to take reasonable steps to alleviate ...
I think the clause is quite sufficient.
MR STEVENSON (5.47): I raise a couple of brief points. Firstly, we were talking about appropriate penalty guidelines. Mr Humphries mentioned that it is the role and responsibility of parliament to set guidelines for the courts. I suppose that is a relevant comment. If we put the death penalty at the end of an offence, it is reasonable to assume that a judge would think that we find that that offence, if proven, and if it is a bad case, warrants or could warrant that penalty. Although we set a particular penalty, it is not just a matter of it being the maximum penalty. I think it is a definite guideline as to how seriously we see that particular offence.
There is no doubt whatsoever, if one looks at this Bill reasonably, that a reasonable person would say that some offences, equivalent to aggravated cruelty persisted with, could certainly require a fairly high penalty. I think the vast majority of people would agree with that. But there are other clauses within this area that have a penalty of $10,000 and one year or both and which in no way, shape or form warrant that sort of penalty.
Mr Humphries also spoke about what to do after one has hit a wild animal or seen a wild animal hit. I think there are many people who would not go back. I have always stopped. I have never hit anything that I recall, but I have always stopped when I have seen something hit.
Mr Lamont: Have you hit things you have not recalled?
MR STEVENSON: As I do not drink, probably not. I think one of the reasons some people do not go back is that they simply cannot confront looking at an injured animal. They do not feel that they can do anything and they just do not want to go back. They try to ignore it. But it is not through callousness. It is just that they do not have the front to do that. The other thing is: What do you do when you have it? It is very hard to tell, in many cases, how seriously injured the animal is. In many cases I have seen you simply cannot tell. Obviously, if it is really seriously injured and nearly dead, you can tell that, and Mr Cornwell's
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