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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2001 Week 5 Hansard (3 May) . . Page.. 1500 ..

MS TUCKER (continuing):

way. I note that Mr Hargreaves is putting up an amendment to remove the power of police to seize a vehicle on seeing what they think is menacing behaviour. That is making a bad piece of law less bad, but I believe it would be preferable not to pass this legislation in the first place. I will therefore be opposing this bill at the in-principle stage but, if the bill passes, I will be supporting Mr Hargreaves' amendment-and the other one if he has got another; I do not know what he was referring to before.

Question put:

That this bill be agreed to in principle.

The Assembly voted-

	Ayes, 10  			Noes, 1

 Mr Cornwell  	Mr Smyth  		Ms Tucker
 Mr Hargreaves  Mr Stanhope
 Mr Hird  	Mr Wood
 Mr Humphries
 Mr Moore
 Mr Quinlan
 Mr Rugendyke
Question so resolved in the affirmative.

Bill agreed to in principle.

Detail stage

Bill, by leave, taken as a whole.

MR HARGREAVES (6.40): I ask for leave to move together the amendments circulated in my name.

Leave granted.

MR HARGREAVES: I move the amendments circulated in my name [see schedule 4 at page 1525].

Essentially, the Road Transport (Safety and Traffic Management) Amendment Bill 2000 proposes that the police and the courts may impound vehicles used in road rage offences. Police officers may impound a vehicle where they have witnessed an incident of menacing behaviour or if the court so orders. The bill does differ from the burnout legislation in that impounding can only take place if a police officer actually witnesses the road rage. It needs to be said for the record that Labor does not condone any menacing behaviour, particularly on the roads.

When asked how many incidents of road rage have been reported, the departmental officer who gave us the briefing could not even hazard a guess. There is a problem with being able to identify it happening because we do not have a lot of police officers on the

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