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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 1 Hansard (16 February) . . Page.. 197 ..
MR SMYTH (continuing):
amendment to the Bill which removes the power of ACT police to impound things interstate, which obviously we cannot do. We have arrangements in place to do that through the other jurisdictions. With that, the Government will be supporting the Bill.
Question resolved in the affirmative.
Bill agreed to in principle.
Clauses 3 and 4, by leave, taken together
MR HARGREAVES (4.08): The Opposition will be opposing these two clauses. I think the one argument will suffice for both. Essentially, the automatic disqualification of certain drivers goes to mandatory sentencing, and that is the part with which the Opposition has the greatest difficulty. The courts ought to be available to determine whether an offence has been committed and, if it has, what the appropriate penalty should be. This provision is, in our view, an interference by the legislature in the role of the judiciary and is, in fact, contrary to the separation of powers.
Mr Speaker, in opposing mandatory sentencing, I would just like to make the point that it is rather typical of the commitment to zero tolerance of this Government that it is supporting this provision. I believe that it has been reasonably proven that the employment of zero tolerance in New York was singularly unsuccessful. I was reading only recently an article about the number of people going to gaol in America. In fact, it appears that America will be celebrating fairly shortly having two million people in gaol. I do not think it is necessary that that be the case. Certainly, it is a sad reflection on society; but we know that that is a direct result of zero tolerance and the laws that go to bringing zero tolerance into effect.
In New York, you can get pinched for a relatively minor motor vehicle offence and have your car taken from you and sold. That is where we are heading. I would like to apply the brakes to that process. We do not have to go down that path. We do not have to go that far. We have quite sufficient penalties on the statute book at the moment for judges to take their pick from when it comes to what people have done when they have broken the law. It will cost you a couple of thousand dollars if you are caught driving in a manner dangerous or committing offences which have similar wording. The whole intent of this sort of legislation is to stop people doing burnouts in the street and being a danger to the people there.
Mr Berry: It has not worked. They are still doing it.
MR HARGREAVES
: Let me say that those on this side of the house are quite in agreement with Mr Rugendyke in wanting to stamp out this practice, but having penalties there is only as good as the enforcement procedures you have to bring them off. I have noticed in the newspapers that much has been made of a few people having lost their cars because they have been pinched. I would have thought that the sorts of
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