Page 1655 - Week 06 - Thursday, 13 August 1992
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Mr Wood: You are interpreting.
MR KAINE: No, I am reading your Bill. There it is in black and white. You are saying that, if within the ACT you promote a rodeo, you are committing an offence that is going to cost you $10,000 or a year in gaol. It is your Bill, Mr Wood, not ours, and you can choose to interpret it. I am reading the words in your Bill, put by you to this Assembly. You explain how promoting a rodeo in the Territory is not an offence under that Bill. I do not believe that you can, no matter how you twist it, no matter how you distort it. There is an offence clearly stated, and you have put your finger right on it, Mr Wood.
MR HUMPHRIES (12.32): Madam Speaker, I think the Minister was saying, and I hope he will be able to clarify this, that if a rodeo is legal in New South Wales it is therefore legal to promote it in the ACT, notwithstanding clause 18. Is that what he was saying?
Mrs Carnell: Yes, that is what he said.
MR HUMPHRIES: I am certain that the Attorney-General would not rise in this place to support that interpretation. He is a lawyer, and I am sure he knows perfectly well that that is not an interpretation the law would accept. We all know that extraterritoriality does not apply to the ACT but does apply to activities taking place in the ACT. If we choose to make an activity illegal in this place, even if it is only the promotion of an activity outside this place, we are perfectly capable of doing that. The ACT's laws are competent to do that and they would do that.
The Minister might put us to the expense of getting a proper legal opinion on this. I can assure you that there would not be a single lawyer in this Territory who would not take the same interpretation of it that we are taking.
Mr Cornwell: Most, let us say.
MR HUMPHRIES: No, I go further than that. I think any lawyer who has done one year of law school would know that the Territory is capable of making a law of this kind making illegal the promotion of an activity, even if it is legal across the border in another jurisdiction. That is fundamental; it is very simple. The Attorney-General knows that, because he is remaining silent, and I suspect that he should be giving that advice to the Minister very soon. This exposes the weakness of the Bill. It is fundamentally badly thought through. You have not thought about the implications of this Bill. It is bad legislation. Think again.
MADAM SPEAKER: It being past 12.30 pm, the debate is interrupted in accordance with standing order 74, as amended by temporary order.
Sitting suspended from 12.34 to 2.30 pm
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