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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 6 Hansard (17 June) . . Page.. 1699 ..
[COGNATE BILL:
Debate resumed from 15 May 1997, on motion by Mr Kaine:
That this Bill be agreed to in principle.
MR SPEAKER: Is it the wish of the Assembly to debate this order of the day concurrently with the Motor Traffic (Amendment) Bill (No. 2) 1997? There being no objection, that course will be followed. I remind members that in debating order of the day No. 4 they may also address their remarks to order of the day No. 5.
MR WHITECROSS (Leader of the Opposition) (6.06): Mr Speaker, the Bill before the house, the Motor Traffic (Alcohol and Drugs) (Amendment) Bill 1997, and the other Bill we are debating cognately, the Motor Traffic (Amendment) Bill (No. 2) 1997, are both premised on what seems to be an increasing trend in laws to do with motor traffic offences - the overweening assumption that continually increasing penalties will improve driver safety and will improve the safety of our roads. Nobody can be too light-hearted about the impact of injury and death on our roads on our community as a whole. They are very significant issues. Driving under the influence of alcohol and driving negligently, culpably or dangerously are indeed important issues for our community. They put other drivers at risk. They ought to be taken seriously and, as a community, we ought to be doing all we can to restrict the occurrence of these things, or t get rid of the occurrence of these things from our roads for the safety of all of us - the safety of drivers who engage in these behaviours and other drivers.
My misgiving with these two pieces of legislation relates to the extent to which the process of increasing penalties, specifying minimum penalties and introducing increasingly onerous provisions for special probationary licences will have the desired effect of reducing these behaviours on our roads. I have to say that I have seen scant evidence of that being the case. In recent times we have seen another little fashion creep into the administration of road rules - the idea of doubling the penalties every time you have a holiday weekend. Somehow or other, this is meant to make everybody drive more carefully on the roads. Maybe the publicity incidental to doubling the penalties has an effect. Equally, it may be that it has no effect and all it means is that the impact on people's lives of being caught is more severe and the governments get the benefit of raising a lot more revenue at a time when there are a lot of traffic fines, et cetera, to be handed out. I am not sure that that is necessarily good government, and I am not sure that that is a good basis for policy-making by parliaments or by governments.
I would like to see some further discussion, and I understand that there is to be some, on these proposed amendments in order to consider some of these issues. In particular, I want to draw attention to a couple. The first is the use of mandatory minimum sentences which take away from the courts the discretion to decide what punishment fits the crime. There are two key pillars of our justice system in this country. One is that we are innocent until proven guilty and the other is that the punishment should fit the crime.
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