Page 4338 - Week 14 - Tuesday, 7 December 1993
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Similarly, someone shown a piece of chicken sitting on a bench, thawing out, tells the inspector, "I am going to use that tonight". The inspector says, "Look, if you use that tonight it will have been sitting out here for several hours. It will not be fit for human consumption. It is not acceptable practice for you to do that". In 99 cases out of 100 that person is going to say, "Okay, I will not use the chicken in that way. I will follow the correct procedures for dealing with this kind of thing and I will not do it". But for a health inspector to say, "I know that in a month's time you are going to be using this flour from this bin; you therefore are guilty of an offence and I am going to seize your means of livelihood", is quite unacceptable. There are other ways of dealing with this problem.
Madam Speaker, Mr Connolly seems to think that uses of these sorts of powers can occur every day. They do not occur every day. They are not appropriate in these circumstances. I think that we have to be asking ourselves whether any sort of public official in this Territory - whether it is a police officer or a health inspector or any other kind of public servant - should have that power. I would maintain that the particular goal being met by the Police Offences (Amendment) Bill that we dealt with in 1989, that is protecting public safety, is a very important goal, and the right being affected by the exercise of that power is a very small right - that is the right of a person to stay in a particular public place - whereas in this case a health inspector who seizes, say, a machine used for making food in someone's premises, or the food itself, potentially deprives that person of his or her livelihood, his or her capacity to earn a living, the capacity of that person to provide an income and to support their children or their family.
Mr Connolly and Mr Berry have to understand that it is simply not good enough to say, "This has been done for a long time somewhere else; it is good enough to happen here". If that argument does not wash on other occasions, in their minds, it should not wash today. Madam Speaker, I think that we have to stand up against this kind of excessive use of legislative power. Obviously, Mr Berry has been lobbied by his health inspectors and they say, "We need these powers, we want these powers; anything to make our job easier"; but that is not good enough for this Assembly.
MR LAMONT (9.28): Madam Speaker, I was quite fortunate some time ago to have been involved with the health inspectors in the ACT.
Mrs Carnell: Were they on strike?
MR LAMONT: No. Because they exercise their powers and negotiating skills quite reasonably, that was not the case, Mrs Carnell. Your flippancy in that sort of throwaway line addresses the very heart of the basis of your party's objections to this part of the Bill. You are being inconsistent in running the line that you are, but that does not really matter. You would rather allow your police spokesman to run your public safety issues on health in order to try to drag up and score points again because of a resounding defeat in this chamber about move-on powers some little time ago. The simple fact is that it is, in my view, the responsibility of this chamber - - -
Mr Humphries: It is more important than violence in public places, is it?
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