Page 3962 - Week 15 - Wednesday, 16 December 1992
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The Chief Minister looks puzzled about that, but that is what the Attorney-General announced in the chamber. He had instructed his department to issue assault charges against men - - -
Mr Connolly: If there had been an assault; if there was violence.
MR HUMPHRIES: If a situation occurs where you do not know what has happened, you do not normally charge someone with assault. If it is only apprehended violence rather than physical violence, presumably that assault charge would not be warranted, would it?
Mr Connolly: The assault charge was laid if there was an assault.
MR HUMPHRIES: We do not know what happens until we get the people in the witness box to find out. Presumably, sometimes we find ourselves doing strange things, going through strange contortions, in order to address these sorts of problems. That is exactly what has happened in this case and it is exactly what we should be avoiding. We should not have to tell police to charge people with assault as a way of dealing with a temporary problem with a piece of legislation. We should, as a matter of preference, fix the piece of legislation before it comes to the Assembly.
We obviously have the problem that we sometimes need to deal with things very quickly, and for that reason, as Mr Kaine indicated, the Liberal Party does not believe that it can support the particular treatment of this problem that Mr Stevenson has brought forward. There are some pieces of legislation that have to be dealt with within a shorter period of time than this motion would contemplate. Certainly, there are times when Bills need to be dealt with expeditiously, either because of some detected problem or because the benefit of the Bill needs to be brought to the community as a matter of priority, and delay does not of itself serve any particularly useful purpose.
For example, the Crimes (Amendment) Bill (No. 3) which we dealt with last night was a very short, self-explanatory piece of legislation. We acknowledge the urgency with which it was generated and we acknowledge that there was an argument for bringing it forward quickly. I might say at this stage that there are other pieces of legislation on the notice paper which simply cannot carry the same description and, therefore, I do not think they will be dealt with in the same way.
Mr Connolly made some facetious comment about Mr Stevenson preferring 90 years to 90 days. For all the scorn he poured on the suggestion, I have to say that I am much more comfortable with the kind of caution Mr Stevenson wants to put in place than with the recklessness this Government has shown. This is a Minister who proudly trumpeted the fact that he introduced - what was it? - 17 Bills in 59 minutes, a new world record for introducing legislation. That is the kind of attitude which, unfortunately, has often left us in the position of having to pick up the pieces after legislation has turned out to be defective in some way.
We do need to consider pieces of reform such as Mr Stevenson has put forward today, but I do not think this is the answer. We do set out our own timetable in this chamber; that is quite true. But I must say that I am a little concerned about what might be the case if this were not a minority government but, rather, a majority government. Perhaps, in those circumstances, a piece of reform - - -
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