Page 4341 - Week 14 - Tuesday, 7 December 1993
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
Mrs Carnell: Well, it is only once today.
MR LAMONT: No, Mrs Carnell, unfortunately it is not just once today. You probably have a different recollection of question time than we do. You have failed on more than one occasion today, and the rest of your friends behind you also have failed on that same test. This debate should be reported as on the Humphries move-on amendments. If this gets up, I suppose Mr Humphries will turn all his policemen into health inspectors so that they can take part in it. That is the level of hypocrisy that your argument comes to.
MR CORNWELL (9.37): If, indeed, Mr Humphries could turn his policemen into health inspectors, under this piece of legislation they would have more power than they had when they were policemen. We are dealing with these words "or will be" - this anticipation. I would like to raise a couple of questions to which I would be pleased to hear the Government's response. I was very interested in the rather petulant performance of the Attorney-General. I notice that when he is not getting his way he gets very petulant. He kept saying that there was not one case where the health inspectors' powers had been abused. Commonsense would indicate to me, if I was running a restaurant and I had a health inspector coming in telling me to do certain things, to do them pretty quick smart. After all, my livelihood depended on them. Therefore, to make the suggestion that there is not one case presented where this has been abused is absolute nonsense. It does not mean that it has not been abused; it just means that people might be too frightened to report them.
There is another point that I would like to comment on. I find it rather interesting that Mr Attorney over there said that this legislation has been in place since 1931, he thought - something like 60 years - and it was also in place elsewhere in the country. It occurred to me that 60 years ago - - -
Mrs Carnell: There were no refrigerators.
MR CORNWELL: Exactly. Thank you, Mrs Carnell. There was no refrigeration. I think the first refrigerated ships were in about the 1930s, to the United Kingdom, but I could be wrong.
Mr Connolly: No, no. They started exporting mutton to England in about 1880 - Elder Smith Goldsbrough Mort. I think it was Mr Mort who invented them.
MR CORNWELL: Not in refrigerated ships. They might have put it in barrels of brine and things like that. The point I am making is this: We are looking at legislation that was created 60 years ago when circumstances were much different from what they are today. Therefore, it is hardly an argument to leave in legislation in 1993 something that was first introduced in 1931. Neither is it a defence, in my view, Madam Speaker, to argue that other States have similar words in their legislation, because we are all aware that many of the States do not review their legislation at regular intervals. Who is to know, if they did review their food legislation, that they would not also decide, as this side of the house has decided, that this is an outrageous imposition to place upon anybody? They may well remove it. So I do not see that you can argue that, because the other States have these words in their legislation or, indeed, they have been sitting around for the last 60 years, this is any justification for placing them in the Food (Amendment) Bill (No. 2) of 1993.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .