Page 1763 - Week 07 - Tuesday, 18 August 1992

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MR MOORE (4.40): In replying to the in-principle debate, Mr Connolly gave an example I had suggested of taking the soccer team and said that perhaps they would not be covered by the Bill. Perhaps he misunderstood what I was saying. I think it is actually covered by amendment No. 1, which reads in part:

A person shall not drive a motor vehicle on a public street if -

... ... ...

(i) being a position that is equipped with a child restraint - while there is an unoccupied position to the rear ... equipped with a child restraint.

So they cannot drive while there is an unoccupied position. The clear implication to me is that, if all the positions are occupied by the rest of the soccer team, you can take somebody in the front seat. That is the point I was making. You do not have to say to the neighbour, "No, I cannot take your kid to soccer, even though I have this spare seat". In those circumstances, once the car is filled up, you can. I suppose the reasonable parent would be looking for the biggest of those children to put in the front seat because that would be the safest way to do it. The biggest would probably get his way anyway, depending on how the family operates. I thought that point was worth clarifying.

MR CONNOLLY (Attorney-General, Minister for Housing and Community Services and Minister for Urban Services) (4.42): I apologise to Mr Moore. I was addressing a different point, which is a catch-all defence rather than this specific provision that you should not be in the front seat unless the back seat is taken up. Mr Moore is quite correct in saying that, when taking the soccer team, the person in the front seat restrained is okay. I was referring to this catch-all defence, which says that it is a defence to not having a child in a restraint if you can show that the act or omission was in the circumstances not unreasonable. That would cover the emergency of taking a child to the hospital or what have you, but it would not cover taking a child to the soccer unrestrained at all, as opposed to in the front seat when the back seat is full. I should not be taken to have been criticising what Mr Moore was saying.

Amendments agreed to.

MR STEVENSON (4.43): I move:

Clause 15, page 7, line 28, omit the clause.

The amendment specifically concerns radar detectors. There are a number of problems with making radar detectors illegal in the ACT. Experience throughout Australia has shown that many people have been detained by police and spoken to quite harshly on a number of occasions, unfortunately, because the police assumed that they had radar detectors. In other words, their equipment showed that someone had a radar detector. Such was the case some three months ago with a barrister from Canberra heading out to Cooma in New South Wales. He was pulled over and his car was searched. He was kept for 20 minutes.

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