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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 8 Hansard (29 August) . . Page.. 2586 ..

MR STANHOPE (continuing):

The suggestion that has been made in my amendments, particularly amendment No 1, which goes to the search of property, is that the authorised person, the person making the search, should have a reasonable ground for believing that the person may be in possession of a prohibited item.

I hear the government's argument, which I am sorry they did not make before, that the proposal is that they will search every bag. Some honesty and some up-frontness in relation to exactly what the security proposals were might have been helpful. Hence my frustration with the fact that the government chose to ignore my letters, and ignore them repeatedly. In all the time I was corresponding, they did not give me any semblance of a substantive answer to any of my questions.

In relation to searches of property and the person, I am proposing that there be a reasonable belief in the mind of the person making the search.

MR HUMPHRIES (Treasurer, Attorney-General and Minister for Justice and Community Safety) (5.34): Mr Speaker, I want to make a couple of brief further comments. On the question of correspondence, Mr Stanhope has written to me three times now. I can see that there were three letters. You did say before that there were four letters. I was wrong and I concede, and I hope you will also make a similar concession. You wrote to me three times. In reply to the first two letters, you received a letter from me. In reply to the third letter, the one on the 9th of this month, I organised a briefing of you and your staff by officers responsible for this legislation. If that is not an adequate response to the issues you have raised, I am sorry. I think I have done the best I can.

On the issue of the list, members seem to forget that the list of prohibited items is a disallowable instrument.

Mr Stanhope: It is a bit late.

MR HUMPHRIES: No, it is not a bit late at all. The list will be tabled in this place by next week, in time for members to be able to disallow it, if they wish, or amend it. What members have seen is a draft of the list. Every one of those items comes from SOCOG's list of items that they wish us to prohibit in the ACT. There are other items which SOCOG has requested that we prohibit but which we have not proposed in this early draft to prohibit. I will mention what some of those items are: bicycles, trumpets, flyers, scooters, vulgar signs and animals.

We have included in our list items which it has been represented to us as mandatory or items which we believe go to security at the venue. That is the basis on which that draft list has been prepared. However, that draft list is not the matter for debate today. There will be opportunities for the Assembly to debate that next week.

Ms Tucker: Which are mandatory? Can you tell us that?

MR HUMPHRIES: I cannot tell you off the top of my head, but it is not the matter that is relevant to today's debate. We are not debating the prohibited items. I assume we all agree there have to be some prohibited items. I assume we do not want people to carry in Reugers, daggers and things of that kind. The question is: what gets prohibited and what does not?

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