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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 3 Hansard (27 March) . . Page.. 685 ..

MS TUCKER (continuing):

Mr Moore said, and I am hearing other people acknowledge that this sort of initiative needs to be well researched before members of this place have to make a decision. I do not understand why we are even having this discussion now if that research has not occurred.

I have been told that it is a position the Liberal Party have held for some time and that, as far as they know, there are no problems with it. I do not think they know very far, and that was echoed this morning by the Institute of Criminology, when Mr McDonald, to whom I spoke, said, "Of course, you need to do research. You need to find data-based information about whether this sort of trial has worked before in other places". He did not at any time say, "Things that happen in other places have no relevance to what happens here". He said, "You obviously cannot say that what happens in Darwin, for instance, will automatically happen here in exactly the same way".

What he did say was that you have to look at research that has been done in other places and you have to take warning from results there. I believe that there is incredible warning in what happened in Darwin, and I would argue that the onus is on this Government to show us why we do not have to be alarmed about the proposal to run a similar trial here. I want to see that and I have not seen it, and I am not at all happy with the way the decision process is working in this place. What we found in Darwin was that there was a 55 per cent increase in serious assaults, sexual and physical, on the weekends, and there was an even higher increase on weekdays.

This is about domestic violence; it is about other sorts of violence; it is about violence that has been more widely spread in the community. Interestingly enough, after I did the media yesterday morning, I was rung by a policeman and I thought, "I am going to get an earful now". But no, he was ringing to say that he supported my concerns. He had real concerns about the whole process of a trial and how you monitor whether facilities are stopping selling alcohol at a certain time. There is the question of transport in Darwin. I do not know how different we are here; we have wiped out the Nightrider bus service. In Darwin, taxis would not pick people up because they were so drunk and the drivers did not want the vomit in their cars. Then they very quickly had to bring in a mini-bus service. So there was a problem with transport. There was an overall increase in consumption of alcohol over the trial period. I do not know why we are so sure that we are different from Darwin, but I am happy to be told that we are. I want to see the evidence, and I have not seen that.

The onus is on the Government and proponents of these sorts of proposals to show us why we do not have to be concerned. I do not see that members of this place have been given the benefit of that information, and it feels like very irresponsible decision-making. We can be told that the finer details of such a trial, of regulating trading hours, would be sorted out, things like the ANU bar - of which you do not have to be a member, Mr Osborne, I can assure you - and the Queanbeyan outlets, of course, and the supermarket outlets. As I mentioned yesterday, in the "Manuka by Night" paper there were grave concerns from residents because they were having to deal with people drinking in their parks. How do we know that this is not going to happen?

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