Page 3073 - Week 10 - Wednesday, 15 September 1993
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MADAM SPEAKER: Thank you. I will henceforth ask anyone who uses that term to withdraw it. I have been considering the issue for a while, but a point of order has not been taken till now. Now that it has been taken, the precedent has been set.
Mr Moore: No more porkies.
MADAM SPEAKER: No more porkies; that is quite right, Mr Moore. Continue, Mr Humphries.
MR HUMPHRIES: Madam Speaker, the reason that such a recommendation was made by the Legal Affairs Committee is that it is impossible to operate such a scheme without such a power. It also follows that, if the police have the power to demand details of name and address in the case of what Mr Moore's Bill describes as minor criminal offences, it is anomalous that they should not also have the power to demand name and address in respect of serious criminal offences such as murder, rape or something of that kind.
Madam Speaker, the power which I am proposing to confer on the police is not anomalous even within ACT law. I direct members' attention to existing legislation which covers the situation where the driver of a motor vehicle is required to supply his or her name and address on demand, even without the suspicion of an offence having been committed. I quote section 172, subsection (2), of the Motor Traffic Act 1936:
Any driver of a motor vehicle who, when required by the Registrar, any inspector, any officer in the execution of his duty or any member of the Police Force, to state his name and place of abode, refuses to do so or states a false name or place of abode, shall be guilty of an offence.
There is no triggering provision here. You do not have to have committed a traffic offence; you do not have to be at the scene of an accident. There is no triggering provision at all. Why is it that a person in the motor vehicle should have any different rights from those of a person on the street? I draw members' attention to the anomalous situation - - -
Mr Berry: Because you do not need a licence to walk down the street.
Mr Connolly: Yet.
MR HUMPHRIES: Madam Speaker, I really feel that I am entitled to be heard.
MADAM SPEAKER: I call for order. I can then remind your side of the house of the call for order and the quiet that then ensued. Please proceed.
MR HUMPHRIES: If a person in a car is pulled up and fails to provide name and address to a policeman, a policeman can reasonably demand name and address in those circumstances. Contrast that with the situation where a policeman goes to the scene of a murder, finds a person at that place, but has no similar power. Is it not a strange anomaly that that power exists in the case of a person in a car who is apprehended, having committed no offence, but not in the case of a person found at the scene of a murder?
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