Page 1420 - Week 05 - Thursday, 13 May 1993
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MR CONNOLLY (Attorney-General, Minister for Housing and Community Services and Minister for Urban Services) (11.54), in reply: I thank members for their support for this Bill as well as for the previous two Bills. Although they are on unrelated subjects, they all relate to better protection for young people in Canberra. It is appropriate that we have general support for each of these measures. Ms Szuty has raised the important point that we really should be taking a preventative rather than a punitive approach in this, as in the MA debate. There are provisions in this Bill which say that the police have power to direct that patrons be removed and that the licensees can remove and, if they fail to, the police can go in and remove. I would very much doubt that we would ever see police physically ejecting patrons from premises in Canberra.
This legislation has been prepared in close consultation with the Australian Hotels Association and persons involved in the catering and hospitality industry, and police and fire authorities. The people in the industry acknowledge that there is a real issue here and that it is very much in their interests to keep in front of the game. I would expect that we will start to see a slight tightening up of entrance to some of these places. Most of the places where you have a problem of overcrowding are premises where there is some form of control on entry. There is a bouncer on the door, which raises another issue which the Government is also addressing. I would expect that one of the duties of those people on the door henceforth, as well as checking that a person is not under age and, hopefully, checking that a person is not overly intoxicated, would be to keep an eye on the occupancy level to ensure that it is not too full. Young persons may start to find at some of the more popular venues around the town on Friday and Saturday nights that they will be told, "Sorry, we are full". That may mean that they will have to go down the street and find another club or bar to attend. I expect that there will be that level of cooperation and that it will not be a particularly punitive approach, although, again, you do need to have that power at the end of the day if you have a recalcitrant publican who is not prepared to cooperate.
Mr Humphries also addressed the important issue of noise control. That is something that is being focused on. The important point which he made is that we are approaching this first with a conciliation strategy before we go to a formal hearing. Again one would hope that responsible individuals in the hospitality industry would prefer to go down that path of conciliation and resolve noise complaints with their neighbours, rather than going to a formal hearing of the licensing authorities which could result in the cancellation of the licence.
Again we have a system which, at the end of the day, has fairly draconian penalties if a recalcitrant licensee continues to have loud rock music blaring out at 3 o'clock in the morning and upsetting the neighbours, but we have a system which encourages conciliation before we get to the punitive stage. It is legislation which will not only help the sleep of people near licensed premises but, more importantly, look after the safety of Canberra people out and about on Friday or Saturday nights at these crowded venues. It is fortunate that we have never had such a problem in the ACT, but it is sensible that the Assembly move to stop a problem developing before it happens.
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