Page 3904 - Week 15 - Tuesday, 15 December 1992
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Mr Lamont: Lou was not in hospital at all.
MS SZUTY: My apologies to Mr Westende. That was not the way it read at all. While I believe that these games and rituals can be considered as part of the rites of passage of drinking in some quarters, it may be time to look at not only how much but also how Canberrans consume alcohol in bars, clubs and pubs, with a view to identifying dangerous practices and to educating people on responsible drinking. Madam Speaker, I, too, commend the Bill to the Assembly.
MR CONNOLLY (Attorney-General, Minister for Housing and Community Services and Minister for Urban Services) (8.24), in reply: Madam Speaker, I am pleased to hear the general support from members for this legislation. This new measure recognises that, just as crime and violence in the inner city is a multifaceted problem, so the appropriate response from government must be multifaceted. It is not a simplistic problem. It is not something that can be solved by simple lines like "Let us set the police dogs onto the kids", as one prominent former member of this Assembly was wont to utter the other weekend.
We are approaching the problem of crime and inappropriate behaviour in the inner city with a range of measures. The other week I tabled for members' information the discussion paper on bouncers and the security industry. Obviously, we need to look at the way the private security industry operates in Canberra. There may be appropriate legislation which will come out of that discussion paper. I indicated in question time today our safer city initiative in relation to the way we have late night taxis and the way we move crowds out from the city. We have increased the foot patrols of the beat squad in the inner city area and we have also cracked down somewhat on late night random breath testing, again to encourage responsible drinking.
Also, we have brought forward an additional law. Madam Speaker, the Government is always cautious about bringing forward additional laws, because we are wary of a philosophy that would say that the way to solve crime is to increase police powers. The move-on power is a good example of that. That was much heralded at the time as the solution to problems; yet we see that despite the law the problems are occurring and the use of the move-on power is seen to be somewhat ineffective. The Labor Party's criticism of the move-on power always was that it was a law that was by its nature open-ended and somewhat arbitrary, and that you do not solve problems with open-ended, arbitrary laws.
That is one of the reasons why these sorts of minor public order offences were repealed in the mid-1980s, both here and in other States. The Police Offences Act, which contained the old "fight in a public place" provision, also contained provisions for things like offensive language and offensive behaviour, and quite properly there have been concerns about the way those laws have been implemented.
Probably the best example was that ABC television documentary a year ago on policing in Redfern which featured a video camera that was cruising around Redfern for a couple of weeks with a police patrol. We heard the police, in confrontation with an Aboriginal person, using foul language with extraordinary regularity, and when the Aboriginal person said, "[Blank] off, copper" he was brought in and charged with offensive language. We saw him being put through the charge process. That film, when shown, caused national controversy and the New South Wales Government at the time acted fairly swiftly with a range of measures to educate the police. They were moved fairly swiftly from Redfern.
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