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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 11 Hansard (28 November) . . Page.. 3252 ..

MR BERRY (continuing):

I cannot believe that this piece of legislation got through cabinet. Half of them must have been asleep. They might have emptied a few of those brown bottles, or do you think maybe cabinet could afford to drink something a little bit more up market than that?

Mr Speaker, I cannot understand how such a piecemeal approach to what is perceived as a problem has found its way into this Assembly. I can only deduce from all of this that this is a government hell-bent on creating the impression that it is doing something about a problem. But at the end of the day it has come up with the silliest of solutions, one which in the end will not sort the problem. I am happy to see the Attorney-General embarrass himself with his ludicrous proposal that glass from beer bottles is more dangerous than glass from bottles containing other alcoholic substances or even more dangerous than glass containing lemonade. I urge members to ditch this proposal.

MR KAINE (10.56): Much of what Mr Berry just said traversed the ground that I was going to cover. This seems to be a half-baked piece of legislation that the government has not really thought about. It sounded like a good idea at the time. I have two questions. Firstly, what prompted this piece of legislation in the first place? The speech made by the Chief Minister when the bill was tabled does not tell us what prompted it. Secondly, how effective does the government think this legislation is going to be? When the Chief Minister tabled this bill, we were told:

I am not too sure what that means-

Before the government starts legislating about something and banning something, it might tell us on how many occasions there has been smashed glass and consequent injuries, how serious the injuries were and whether those occurrences warrant a legislature banning something. I do not know, because the government has not bothered to justify itself. It has not told us. All it has said is that it would help to avoid "the repetition of smashed glasses and consequent injuries that have occurred on previous occasions".

I am not impressed. I do not know what that means, and I do not believe that this legislature ought to ban things as a matter of practice simply because the government comes along with a statement like that. For that reason alone, I will oppose this legislation. It has not been justified by the government.

More importantly, how does the government believe this legislation is going to be effective? It does not ban the consumption of alcohol in glasses; it just bans the sale of it. That means that I can buy any quantity of alcohol in bottles the day before, put it in the boot of my car, arrive in Civic centre on New Year's Eve, consume as much of it as I want, smash the bottles-do what I like. It would not be against this legislation. All the legislation does is prevent people who are in the business of selling liquor from selling it. What a nonsense!

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