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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 4 Hansard (18 April) . . Page.. 1106 ..

Mr Berry: It is a simulated game.

MR HUMPHRIES: Listen, Mr Berry; you will hear. A game of paintball is actually less violent in that sense than a game of rugby league.

Mr Berry: Oh, cut it out!

MR HUMPHRIES: It is. People do not break their legs, have their Achilles tendons pulled or have their noses broken and so on in a game of paintball - unless they fall over as they are running along. These things do not happen. I can prove that the average game of paintball is much less injurious, in a physical sense, to its participants than is a game of rugby league. So, clearly, that is not the argument the Greens are putting. Presumably, the argument is that we encourage a violent psychology; people are shooting at each other. I can see that. People are shooting at each other. But it is far from being the only sport or recreation played in this country where that kind of thing actually occurs.

We have in this city - and have had for a number of years - a game called Lazer Zone, where people shoot guns at each other. "Aha", says Ms Horodny, "You cannot count that either, because the people are not dressed in contemporary clothing and they are not shooting contemporary-looking guns; they are shooting other sorts of guns". I have to say that I think this argument is very tenuous indeed. In the Olympic sport of fencing, people simulate running one-metre long pieces of steel through each other's heart. That is how you win the point - by simulating the running of steel through people's hearts. Would Ms Horodny and Ms Tucker advocate the banning of fencing because of direct and violent behaviour with sharp swords? What is the difference? I do not understand the difference. Mr Speaker, I put it to Ms Horodny and Ms Tucker that they are lecturing us and assuming that there is a connection between a violent sport and violence in society. I would say to them that there might well be a connection; but it might, in fact, be an ameliorating connection, not a damaging connection.

Has it occurred to Ms Horodny and Ms Tucker that, by being able to play these sorts of sports, people actually take out of their systems violent tendencies and, in fact, relieve their capacity to do so in illegal ways?

Ms Tucker: Stress is better relieved by jogging around the block, actually. It hypes them up more. It does not work that way.

MR HUMPHRIES: Mr Speaker, I suggest that, when the inevitable Green government arrives in the ACT and we see Chief Minister Tucker and Deputy Chief Minister Horodny, they begin their brave new world by banning all these violent sports, because they are all violent - all the rugby leagues, the fencing, the Lazer Zones, the computer games and all the other games that rely on body contact. I suggest that they ban them and then say, "Anyone who gets a tendency to want to punch somebody else should go for a run around the block, and they will feel much better after a 20-minute jog".

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