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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1999 Week 1 Hansard (8 December) . . Page.. 4017 ..

MR STEFANIAK (continuing):

people who are doing burnouts will not be overly phased by this measure. If they happen to get caught, if their car happens to be impounded, that is an inconvenience and it is unfortunate, but I doubt very much if they are going to come back. If they do come back, they are probably being incredibly stupid and then the law takes further effect. But there will be a deterrent. New South Wales has quite clearly shown that.

Those opposite keep talking about the coalition being right wing; that it has moved to the Right in terms of law and order. The New South Wales Labor Party, the Carr Labor Government, has introduced some very significant law and order measures, some of which probably go even further than things that I would support. They have been very strong on law and order. The Queensland Labor Party has been quite strong on law and order. Just because you pass a law and order measure, does that mean you are moving to the Right? Look around the world. Look at the countries which have very draconian measures. China is a left-wing regime. It is hardly right wing, yet they shoot people on sight for things like larceny. In the old Soviet Union, you could be sent to a gulag or get shot at the drop of a hat. How more draconian could you get? But they are hardly right-wing regimes.

My colleague Mr Moore, a member of this Government, is leading the charge against this Bill. I think he is wrong, but that is part of his deal with joining our Government. He is deadset against this. He is hardly right wing. He would be quite offended to be called that, and he is leading the charge against it. It just happens that there is a majority of people in this Assembly who see this as a commonsense measure. They can see that in New South Wales it does work. They reject the comments made by the Labor Party, saying that this measure is having a go at youth, that it is not going to work and that it is needlessly draconian. I do not think any of that washes. It is not draconian. If people are wrongfully picked up by the police, as I said earlier, they can always defend it. They will certainly get a fair hearing in our courts. No-one is going to dispute that.

The points made by the Opposition are completely spurious. To say that this is a lurch to the Right is absolute nonsense. My colleague Mr Moore makes an absolute farce of that. Maybe it is a lurch to the Left because it is left-wing regimes who seem to have far more totalitarian law and order policies than a lot of the right-wing parliamentary democracies around the world. I stress again that it works in New South Wales. I think you are badly misjudging young people and the effect that it will have on anyone involved in this. It is something that will be accepted - probably respected, if what has occurred in New South Wales is anything to go by.

Whilst there are a few points which I was initially surprised at, I respect what has occurred in New South Wales. I respect the fact that Mr Rugendyke has mirrored his legislation on the New South Wales legislation. I followed it sufficiently to know that it has had a very significant effect there. I am fully supportive of what he is attempting to do and what I believe he will do. I think a lot of people will be the safer as a result of that. I certainly reject comments that it has any draconian effect on possible offenders. I think the vast majority of them will take a lot greater care as a result of this legislation. That is what we are all about.

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