Page 2427 - Week 08 - Wednesday, 18 August 1993
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I concede that in some of the 199 situations in which 2,620 people have been affected by the move-on powers somebody who was moved on in fact had no intention to be involved in a fight or to damage property. I concede that that quite logically would have been the case on at least a few occasions. But we need to weigh these two situations - the case of misapprehension by police about the intent of a particular individual or group versus the cases where actual injury or actual damage is averted. Surely, where the police have exercised discretion, where that discretion is evident in what they have done, where the use of this power has been judicious and sparing and where the circumstances of its use have been strictly limited in legislation, our confidence that good is being done and that it outweighs the evil that might be perpetrated with such a power is well based. We can have that confidence. Indeed, there is no evidence at all before us of which I am aware which would lead us to say that we should not have that confidence.
A suggestion has been made - it was made rather extraordinarily, I might say, on the radio the other day by a member of the Civil Liberties Council, indeed the president, with whom I spoke beforehand - that perhaps this power should be withdrawn because, although it appears to have been successful and appears to be working, it would be employed by police anyway, so we do not need to actually have it on the statute books; the police will actually exercise that power. I think that is a strange, even dangerous argument for a person to express about these powers. In most other areas we would be aghast at the suggestion that our police force should be exercising powers they do not actually have.
Imagine another hypothetical situation in which a policeman - let us call him a policeman on this occasion - is walking around Civic at night and he confronts an angry crowd, a group of drunken people, people who are rowdy or prepared to start some kind of trouble, or maybe people starting to vandalise something. He confronts this crowd and says to them, "You must move on from this place. Please disperse". Someone in the crowd knows, because of the publicity, that the Assembly has repealed this power; that there is no power for the police to move people on. He confronts the policeman. The policeman has to back down. His bluff has been called. His authority has been seriously eroded.
Mr Connolly: You have to charge somebody with an offence, for a crime that has been committed, not a crime that might be committed.
MR HUMPHRIES: A crime has not been committed.
Mr Connolly: Charge him with the crime.
MR HUMPHRIES: Madam Speaker, I think members opposite do not understand the circumstances in which these things might occur. A crime has not been committed, but any policeman or policewoman worth his or her salt can see that trouble is brewing, can see that there is great potential for a crime to be committed.
Mr Connolly: It is hard to look into the human heart and see what a person might do.
Mr Wood: You are assuming.
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