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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 7 Hansard (29 June) . . Page.. 2296 ..

MR STEFANIAK (continuing):

Despite all of that provocation, despite some excellent reasons and very good emotional reasons for banning the Communist Party to show disapproval of an abhorrent system that that party supported, the Australian public, and I think rightly so, thought that democracy should prevail. Despite all the evils inherent in the Communist Party, in Australia, even an evil party like that had the right to be heard in a free and democratic society.

Mr Humphries today quoted from a statement I made in the 1991 budget debate. I was then the police spokesman and the legal spokesman for this party. Mr Connolly and the Labor Party cut the police budget by, I think, about $2 million. That amounted, effectively, to about a 15 per cent cut in the police operational budget. That was where it was largely targeted. That was something I found quite abhorrent, and there was widespread public condemnation about that move at the time.

I remember organising and addressing a number of rallies against that part of the Labor Party's budget. I moved a form of words, too, which indicated my disgust, and that of the Liberal Party opposition, at what was occurring. But, at the end of the day, as Mr Humphries quoted from my speech then, it was the Labor Party's budget. We disagreed with it but they had a right to put their budget in place. It was up to the public whether they accepted that or not. If the public did not like it they could vote them out at the ballot box. That is the proper way of doing things, despite our very strongly felt views. It would have been great if they had not put that cut in their budget, but, at the end of the day, it was their budget and their right to do so.

Similarly, I think the shooting gallery is a dog's breakfast. I do not think it is going to work. I do not necessarily think that addicts will go there. It really concerns me that probably 80 or 90 per cent of the heroin used there will come from the proceeds of crime. A lot of innocent victims will have suffered as a result of their homes being burgled or banks being robbed or whatever. However, 10 people in this Assembly late last year voted for a two-year trial of the shooting gallery. I, with six other members, opposed that. We voted against it. My views have not changed on the matter, but I accept that I was in the minority. I lost.

Obviously that shooting gallery is going to cost some money. Mr Moore has put in his budget a small amount of money for that shooting gallery out of what is a big budget. I don't like it. I still don't like it. If Mr Rugendyke would like to bring in a bill repealing that act that we passed in December 1999, I would vote for it. You might, too, Mr Speaker. I see that you are smiling. Probably none of our views have changed. That, to me, is the proper way to go about it.

I respect Mr Rugendyke's opinion on the shooting gallery. I respect Mr Osborne's views on the shooting gallery. I respect, even though I do not necessarily agree with them, the views of Mr Moore, Mr Stanhope, Mrs Carnell, my colleague Mr Smyth and others, but we have had that vote and, rightly or wrongly, it is law. I might think it is a bad law, but it has passed into law. Mr Moore, accordingly, has the right to expect the Assembly now to ratify the expenditure, whether a lot of us like it or not. I would suspect that four out of the seven members of the government do not particularly like it, but we accept that it was the will of the Assembly. There are other ways in which those of us who do not like the shooting gallery can attempt to overturn that decision. As I have already suggested,

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