Page 1713 - Week 06 - Thursday, 13 August 1992
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Mr Stevenson: Does that mean that it is not stupid now?
MR WOOD: No, it has been addressed. It is a good question that you ask, Mr Stevenson. What happened was that within the Labor Party we sat around and discussed this and sorted it out long before it came into this Assembly - something that other people should have done. If you look at paragraph (3)(a) or (3)(b), Mr Westende, there is your answer.
MR STEVENSON (6.08): Madam Speaker, I have a couple of points. I start with the comment by Mr Wood that the Labor Party got together and sorted all these things out earlier - except, of course, to do with fishing - - -
Mr Wood: We read it.
MR STEVENSON: "We read it and we missed that bit". Is that the truth or not? Did you read "promote" and miss that bit?
Mr Wood: When did you first look at this?
MR STEVENSON: I looked at it a long time ago. It was perfectly okay for Mr Berry to bring the point up. I think it is reasonable for any member to bring up any of these points. It is perfectly okay to raise them in this house.
Mr Wood: With the right motive.
MR STEVENSON: Heaven's above, who can tell what the motive is? The other point I want to raise is to do with the penalty of $10,000 or imprisonment for one year for setting a steel-jawed or a prohibited trap to catch an animal. I do not think this is a matter of the peach on the tree. To say that someone deserves to be imprisoned or fined $10,000 for setting a steel-jawed trap, when we look at the level of penalties for various things in our society, I think is unreasonable. There are times, I grant, when a high fine and perhaps imprisonment in an extreme case may be valid.
Mr Connolly: Do you know what it can do to a kid if he steps in one of these things? Off goes the foot.
MR STEVENSON: The Attorney-General raises an interesting point: Do I know what these things can do to a child - not a kid; that is another animal? Of course it could damage a child or anybody else who steps in one, and that may be a reasonable point if there were no other - - -
Mr Connolly: They are just wasting time.
MR STEVENSON: The Attorney-General says that I am just wasting time. I am prepared to look at the point he raised and say that it is a fair point and that maybe it is relevant in this case. What I get is an interjection that it is a waste of time. The whole principle should be that members should be allowed to raise any point they like and debate it. That is the key to what we should be doing here. The idea that simply because it disagrees with someone's viewpoint it should not be said is unreasonable.
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