Page 1890 - Week 07 - Wednesday, 16 June 1993
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also at Glebe Park, but again we think probably one of the car parks around Civic would be better than Glebe Park, given the fact that Glebe Park is essentially green space and construction of concrete facilities there would detract from the quiet park nature of Glebe Park. So we are looking essentially at one of the car parks. We are proposing a facility that will be smaller and more informal than existing ones. We do not have the financial wherewithal to duplicate the Belconnen facility, which is a high standard, international competition standard skateboard facility. We are looking at something rather more modest, and we will probably start it on a temporary basis to see how it works.
We think this is the way to deal with skateboarding if it is seen to be a problem. We have to say that we do not see this as being at the top of the priority problems. There have been very few incidents where pedestrians have come into collision with skateboards in the Civic area. These incidents are a tiny proportion of the number of times that pedestrians come into contact with motor vehicles in the Civic area, but obviously we are not banning motor vehicles from the Civic area. That would be impracticable. But we acknowledge that it can be frightening for aged pedestrians when they see skateboarders. It is probably more frightening, in many cases, when aged pedestrians see people on pushbikes, because the pushbikes seem to make less noise and to be moving at considerably higher speed. It has for quite some time been an offence to belt along on a pushbike within 10 metres of an open shopfront, but the advice from police and other relevant authorities is that it is extremely difficult to enforce that law. It would be even more difficult to enforce a skateboard law.
Most skateboarders are young kids; that is, they are under the age of 18. When you start dealing with juveniles, there are some very onerous provisions on the police under the Children's Services Act - and properly so, because we are saying that you deal with young people who are potential criminal offenders in a much more careful way than you deal with adults. Most young kids who are on skateboards will not be carrying any form of identification. They do not have to carry identification. We do not live in a state that requires identification. If you start trying to enforce these laws and kids do not have identification, there will obviously be an enforcement problem. Are we saying that we will drag all the kids into the Civic police station and hold them until they can prove their identity? It is a difficult issue. Admittedly, that has not stopped us in the case of some other laws. Bicycle helmet legislation was a law that received general support in this Assembly, even though it too had some potential enforcement difficulties. But we would make the point that enforcement of pushbike law has proved difficult, and enforcement of a skateboard and rollerblade law would be even more difficult.
There are also some issues in the Bill which would need to be addressed if the Assembly were to proceed with it further. The Bill refers to "rollerblades", which is in fact a proprietary brand name. It would be better to get a more effective definition to clarify what is meant. "In-line skates" may be the more appropriate generic term. They are issues of detail; but, given that the Government opposes the legislation, we will not be moving amendments at this time.
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