Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .

Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 1 Hansard (22 February) . . Page.. 223 ..

MS FOLLETT (continuing):

Despite Mr Humphries's orgy of self-congratulation when the Government introduced this Bill, it is part of a process that was started by Labor in government - in fact, when I was Attorney-General back in 1989. The process I speak of is one of tidying up the laws that stand on the statute books of the ACT. The Bill the Government has presented seeks to delete 51 Acts from our books, most of them archaic, some of them feudal, some of them imperial Acts - a whole range of items of legislation that have no further application in the Territory. Clearly, it is something we would support. I repeat that it is a process that was started by Labor. In fact, during the previous Assembly the Labor Government, as it was then, repealed 34 Acts as part of this continuing process of law reform. We will, of course, support any Bill that brings about progressive law reform and makes a sensible move towards making the law more understandable, more readily accessible, to our community. As I say, we will be supporting this Bill.

MR MOORE (4.51): It is a pleasure to rise to support this Bill, as indeed I did for those Ms Follett mentioned under her Government. Unusual old redundant Acts have been replaced. There is one group of legislation that I think is of some interest, and that is the laws relating to the egg industry, which are repealed. They are the Egg Industry Act 1975, the Egg Industry (Amendment) Act 1979 and the Egg Industry (Amendment) Act 1982. I am surprised that Ms Horodny was not very rapidly to her feet here because she has certainly made a number of public statements about the egg industry. My understanding is that at the moment she is preparing some legislation on the egg industry and particularly on the way chickens - chooks, hens, layers, however you want to describe them - are kept. I am very interested to see that legislation because the industry is one that I have always considered very questionable. Before we deal with Ms Horodny's legislation, I hope to go and visit the egg farm out past Mr Berry's place, on the outer side of that electorate, and have a look.

The other Act I found interesting is the Police Offences Act. The section referred to in the presentation speech deals with the place of public resort where liquor is sold and with somebody who knowingly permits or suffers persons of notoriously bad character to meet together and remain therein. I can imagine the pub at Kingston having to shut down, the tradies club having to close down; all the places where I normally go to drink would be forced to close down or at least I would be booted out. So this is an interesting one.

When we did the report on prostitution, at that stage I think it was within the same Act, and we removed it when we did our new prostitution Act. There was an offence, I think punishable by a fine of 10 shillings or something of that order, of serving a known prostitute. So with the known prostitutes and the persons of notoriously bad character, we had a situation where it was the publican or the person serving who had to make the decision, and that is hardly the way our laws operate at this stage. We certainly do not expect that kind of decision-making because we have so many different views about what is notoriously bad character and what is not. There are some people, advocates of an end to battery chickens, whom I imagine some would consider as characters who are notoriously bad, and the very same people would probably consider their opponents to be characters who are notoriously bad.

Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .