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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1999 Week 1 Hansard (8 December) . . Page.. 4010 ..

MR HUMPHRIES (continuing):

purpose of conducting those sorts of street related activities. They generally manage to avoid the police, largely because of the existence of scanners which allow them to know when the police are converging on that point and to make a swift getaway. Certainly, the number of apprehensions in those circumstances is quite small.

The point I make when saying all of this is that simply to impose a fine, or suspend someone's licence for a short period, or even to seize a vehicle, as Mr Moore suggested, for 24 or 48 hours, is not an effective response in many cases to the sorts of offences which are being committed. It simply is not effective.

Mr Berry: Is this the burnouts?

MR HUMPHRIES: Burnouts, yes. Mr Speaker, I am not saying that all those who do burnouts necessarily conduct drag races and do other things that are illegal. That obviously would be far too great a generalisation, but there is a subculture in Canberra which engages in activities around street machines or modified cars. Those activities are a feature of that subculture, and those who engage in those activities, I am sure, do so with the expectation that they will, at some point or other, come into conflict with the law. They almost countenance it and expect it. As I said, in one case that I knew of, they budgeted for it.

Mr Speaker, I think it is important, if we are going to deal with the problem in Canberra, given the range of laws that we have at the moment which we could use, which clearly are not being effective, and they are not - - -

Mr Berry: That is not our fault.

MR HUMPHRIES: It is not anybody's fault.

Mr Berry: Yes, it is. It is the fault of the people who are trying to administer them.

MR HUMPHRIES: Well, okay. I think what Mr Berry is saying is that the Federal Police, whose job it is to administer them, are not effectively using those laws presently to make sure that these people are not able to continue to do burnouts on Canberra streets.

Mr Berry: On one occasion they did, recently. It was demonstrated. I will respond to that.

MR HUMPHRIES: I reject that suggestion. The Federal Police are acutely aware of these problems. I have spent some time travelling with the police around Canberra while they have been trying to address those problems and they are extremely frustrated by the inadequacy of the present laws to deal with them. I think Mr Berry follows the path, unfortunately a very well trodden path by his colleagues in the ALP, of attacking the Federal Police. My estimation is that the Federal Police do the best they can with the existing laws. Mr Berry, let me put this on the record. You said that the fault lies with those who administer the laws.

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