Page 3093 - Week 10 - Wednesday, 15 September 1993
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
Mr Lamont put the bizarre argument that the Bill targets a particular class of citizens. I look forward to Mr Lamont moving for the repeal of the Motor Traffic Act because it targets a particular class of citizens - motorists. I look forward to his supporting Mr Moore's Bill later today to repeal parts of the Crimes (Offences against the Government) Act because they target public servants. The fact of life is that very few Acts apply equally to all classes of citizens.
Mr Lamont: You have deliberately misrepresented the position, but that is not unusual.
MR HUMPHRIES: Almost all laws we pass here apply more heavily to some classes of citizens than to others. That is an inevitable fact that Mr Lamont cannot get away from. Ms Szuty said that the Community Law Reform Committee will examine this matter, and she wants to await the outcome of its report. I have great confidence in that committee, but I have some doubts about whether it will be able to collect information, certainly by October, sufficient to be able to look at the critical questions in this area. They will be able to examine the matters from the point of view of ideology - whether we should or should not have such laws giving police powers to move people on - but the question is how the powers have actually operated. For example, will they have access to the police who have used these powers? Will they be able to go through a proper process of examining the impact of the powers? I am not sure that they will.
This Government does not trust its police force. It does not believe that police officers in this Territory are capable of reasonably and judiciously exercising this power. It has perhaps an historical enmity towards police forces. It is most unfortunate. The Labor Party feels pretty good about this, but the citizens of the Territory will not. We cannot avoid the fact that in the 1989 debate and the 1991 debate on this matter we made a pact with the community and with the police force. We set conditions. We said, "We will let these powers stay in this Territory only if certain conditions are met. You have to demonstrate that they are effective. You have to show that they are not being misused. There must not be complaints about these powers". The police have complied with those conditions. They have met those conditions. The pact that we as an Assembly made with the police is to be dishonoured today by the vote we are going to take. I think the police can rightly feel quite chagrined about the way in which they have been treated by this Government, because they have kept their side of the bargain. They have used this power sparingly, and they have done the right thing.
I observe a certain pattern in some of the votes the Assembly has taken in recent months. This Government - and unfortunately it has been aided in this respect by other members of the Assembly - is increasingly intent on undoing every vestige of the Liberal legacy in administration and law-making in this Territory over the last four years. Consider, for example, that in the last few years the Government has announced its intention not to proceed with the corporatisation of ACTEW. It has decorporatised the TAB in the Territory. It has scrapped the ACT Board of Health set up by the Alliance Government. It has dumped the Balancing Rights report. It has changed the name of the hospital that the Liberal Party had named. Now it is removing the move-on powers. It is hard to point to anything which could be said to be the legacy of the Liberal Party in law in this Territory. There are very few instances indeed, Madam Speaker. If members wish to make this minority Government the sole determinant of the philosophy by which this Territory is governed and by which the laws of the Territory are drawn up, then it is doing a very good job of doing just that.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .