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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 9 Hansard (4 September) . . Page.. 3019 ..

MR KAINE (continuing):

details and he or she gets back in the car and drives away. In fact, a lot of them are unlicensed drivers, but the police can do nothing because they have given them three days to turn up with their licence. They do not turn up, do they? The address they gave the police is the wrong address. It may even be a false name.

So, we have the absurd situation where we have police officers pulling people up by the roadside who are unlicensed drivers - maybe they even had their drivers licence suspended by the court - and they drive away because we give them three days' grace to produce their licence. How stupid can we be? So, off they go, and they drive around, unlicensed, until at some future time another police officer pulls them up; they still get another three days to produce their licence; and so it goes on. I do not believe that it is an undue imposition to expect a person who has a licence to drive to carry it. What is the problem with that? Nobody has yet explained to me what is the problem in expecting a licensed driver to have their licence with them when they are driving their car.

I know that Mr Moore says, "A good excuse is that I forgot; so, it does not matter". He told me this. If he forgets to register his car, he does not get three days' grace. He is driving an unregistered car, and he gets penalised right there and then. So, why would you not penalise a driver for not carrying the licence that says that he is entitled to drive his vehicle? Indeed, the penalty is only $45 anyway. So, what is the big deal? Is this onerous? Is it asking too much of reasonable people to have their drivers licence with them?

Mr Speaker, the logic in many of these amendments defies me, and that is another one. As I said before, I can see that Mr Moore has the numbers; but I suspect that, a year from now, maybe the same group of people - maybe a group of newly elected people come February - are going to be sitting here debating the same issue and asking, "Why did those people a year ago not send drivers the right message? Why were they such lily-livers? Why were they so weak-kneed that they would not send the right message?". So, I will give it a year and see whether I am right.

MR WHITECROSS (9.46): Mr Speaker, I feel sorry for Mr Kaine. This is the second time in two days that he has been in this predicament, defending the indefensible, trying to defend an illogical policy that he has been saddled with by other members of his party. Yesterday, Mrs Carnell saddled him with a ridiculous policy on tourism. Today, he has been saddled with a ridiculous policy by Mr Humphries and Mr De Domenico. Mr Humphries is not even here to defend it. Mr Kaine talked yesterday about how the community was struggling to understand the Government's policy on tourism promotion, and I am sure that the community would be struggling to understand this policy as well, because it makes no sense.

It is a good thing that Labor, the Greens and Mr Moore have been going through this Bill, scrutinising it carefully in the way that legislatures should, and coming up with appropriate amendments to improve it. It now provides, I think, the guidance which some people feel the magistrates need, including identifying categories of people who we would think should get licences only in the most extraordinary circumstances. At the same time, Mr Speaker, it preserves the integrity of the system of government and the separation of powers that we have, where magistrates make decisions about who gets licences and who does not.

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