Page 957 - Week 04 - Wednesday, 31 March 1993
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
Mr Berry: Put a muzzle on them when you take them out.
MR CORNWELL: Madam Speaker, I would like you to put a muzzle on the Minister for Health while I am speaking. This proposed new paragraph thus enables the court not to impose a reparation order on parents of an offender if those parents have done all in their power to control and to care for their child. It will require a wilful and habitual failure to exercise due care and control of the child before the court can seek reparation. I might add that that provision would also obviate the absurd example given by Mr Connolly last night on television of a boy having an argument with his parents and getting back by burning down a school. That would not be an example of a parent exhibiting a wilful and habitual failure to exercise due care and control.
The legislation, however, will apply to parents who have regularly not exercised such care and control. Here I make the point that we are dealing with under-age offenders, maybe 13 or 14 years of age, and it is reasonable to expect parents to know where they are, particularly at night, when much of this often quite sophisticated vandalism occurs. I say "sophisticated" because evidence of paint daubed walls and equipment and of attention by spray cans, I would suggest, indicates premeditation.
Mr Wood: Paint is a fairly common element around schools.
MR CORNWELL: It would also probably lead to telltale evidence, Mr Wood. So, even if the parent were unaware before the event of just what the child was doing, one would expect any reasonable, responsible adult to question a son or a daughter who came home paint smeared.
Let me at this point lay to rest a canard that I anticipate will be raised against this legislation, that is, that it will affect those least able to pay. Firstly, I point out that it can be a matter of negotiation as to how the reparation is paid, either in full or perhaps in instalments. Secondly, the suggestion that only the poor are likely to have delinquent children is offensive and insulting and does not square with oft quoted, albeit selective, experience.
This experience argument states that, if it is, say, domestic violence, then every stratum of society is involved because it is topical to see domestic violence as an issue, it is gender specific, and therefore responsibility can be sheeted home with condemnatory impunity. Responsibility for vandalism, however, is not so currently fashionable, so we question its worth as a matter of social concern and we do so by using the poor as our ammunition, suggesting that they predominantly will be the victims. In reality, the victims are society in general and in particular the hardworking parents of the various vandalised schools. It is often the results of these parental efforts through the P and C, with its fetes and cake stalls and other volunteer fundraising activities, that suffer most.
The Government has taken no legal action against convicted offenders to obtain reparation. One must ask why. As previously stated, the opportunity to do so exists already in respect of adults and up to $1,000 for children. Why has the Government failed either to act or to direct the Department of Education, in the case of schools, to act through the courts to seek this reparation? You cannot expect individual school principals, as was suggested during the 1992 estimates
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .