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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 3 Hansard (27 March) . . Page.. 684 ..

MR MOORE (continuing):

but, for that to take place, the big stick ought to be there in the first place. There still is the possibility that they are going to lose significant amounts of money if they do not take their responsibility seriously in terms of the use of alcohol and the serving of alcohol.

This is not a simple issue. Ms Follett, and Ms Tucker as well, raised a whole series of other points about domestic violence, about violence in Civic, about the use of police, about closing hours, about how you can move a problem not only from one location to another - for example, from Civic to Manuka - but also from a nightclub to a home. There is a whole series of very difficult issues that need to be addressed in any study on this issue, but those issues do need to be addressed - - -

Mr Berry: So prohibition works?

MR MOORE: Mr Berry has just come in, and he interjects that prohibition works, after a little chat to Ms Follett. Unfortunately, it was a question I have already answered once, Mr Berry. Your shallow understanding of this whole issue flabbergasts me. As I have explained to you before and as I have explained to Ms Follett, I do not suggest for one minute that prohibition works; but I also do not suggest ever, on any drug, that we have a free-for-all. We are talking about controlled availability. That is a system we should use with all drugs, and we should apply it in different ways to all drugs. It is a great shame, Mr Berry, that you do not join about 100 of your Labor colleagues from around Australia who recognise that prohibition does not work and look sensibly for methods of minimising harm. That is exactly what Mr Osborne has attempted to do here - look for a method to minimise the harm associated with the use of alcohol. If his method increases harm, then we ought to leave it. If the method reduces harm, then we should adopt it. But the only way we are going to know is to trial it.

What is being proposed at the moment is a series of other things that could work in an integrated way and perhaps should be trialled before we look at what Mr Osborne has proposed, and we have a method to do it. This Bill simply facilitates those things. It does not compel Mr Humphries to go out and introduce 3.00 am closing. That is what I see as stage two. Stage one is to allow that power to be put into his hands, and then to monitor it, remembering that in this Assembly we can still contain that power in one of two ways - by absolute disallowance or by amendment under that same Act. Granted, we have to watch for the subordinate legislation, and that is what makes it different from the black-letter legislation we are dealing with, like Mr Osborne's legislation. That is why I have foreshadowed that I will be moving amendments to this legislation in the detail stage. This is an appropriate reaction to a situation. It is appropriate, provided that it is done on a trial basis and monitored to check that it reduces the harm associated with the use, or abuse, if you like, of this particular drug, alcohol.

MS TUCKER (11.17): The issue for us here is, once again, that it is always much more complex than it might look at first glance. I have expressed in the media, as most members are aware, serious concerns about the consequences of these sorts of initiatives, which, if they have not been thoroughly researched, can have very harmful effects on the community. I do not believe that this has been sufficiently well researched. I heard what

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