Page 2399 - Week 09 - Thursday, 17 September 1992
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MR MOORE: That is okay. Mr Humphries's amendment, I think, is a very sensible one. I listened to Mr Connolly's argument. It is an argument that has been presented time and again in this Assembly - that the magistrate or the judge, as the case may be, has the ability to look at a situation and to provide an appropriate penalty for the particular offence. I agree wholeheartedly that that is an appropriate thing for a magistrate to do. However, if we were to take that argument to its extreme we would simply put one penalty at the end of the Bill and leave it to the magistrate to decide what was to happen.
Mr Humphries, very sensibly, has taken a small part of the Bill and said, "I think that we have to give our judges and magistrates a better indication of how the Assembly, as a whole, is thinking on this particular penalty". This in no way, I think, diminishes the value of the Bill. His amendment still is a significant penalty. We are still talking of $10,000 or imprisonment for one year. Those of us who have visited prisons in the last little while realise that that is a stiff penalty. I think we have to recognise that it is not a terrible softening of the intention of the Bill. It is a quite sensible point. I would ask the Government to reconsider their position so that we can give a better indication, a more defined indication, to the courts as to our thinking on this particular case. I accept the sense of what both Mr Humphries and Mr Connolly are saying, but I think in this case that we should give a better indication to the courts. That is why Mr Humphries moved the amendment, and it makes good sense.
I cannot let this Bill pass, Madam Speaker, without relating some of my personal experiences in terms of listening devices and my surprise that this Bill was not brought down by the former Attorney-General, Mr Bernard Collaery. He seemed from the time I met him, or not too long after I met him, to be very concerned about listening devices.
Mr Cornwell: I would speak a bit more strongly than that, actually.
MR MOORE: I am being very gentle. We remember the stories about him having the plants in his office changed fairly regularly in case there were listening devices in them. I try to keep the same plants for as long as I can, but they tend to wilt. I do not know whether that is caused by the acid leaking out of listening devices and ruining the roots and so forth.
Mr Connolly: You have to water them, Michael.
MR MOORE: I will try that. I think it is worth relating another little experience. Now that I am far enough removed from it, I can see the humorous side.
Prior to the election in 1989 I remember meeting in Mr Collaery's office in, I think, Austin Street and having Mr Collaery play a record in the middle of this meeting. It was very soft, nice, gentle music. I thought, "Why are we playing this record?". The story was that this was a very special record to deal with anybody with one of those very fancy electronic listening devices which, when pointed at a window, can pick up the vibrations of the window and allow the operator to hear what is going on. The playing of this record mucks that up. It must rattle the windows in some way or other, at some micro level, so that the device does not work. When I think back on it, the amusing part is: Who would be bothered to listen to those conversations anyway? The second point, I guess, is: Even if they did listen,
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