Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .
Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2001 Week 7 Hansard (19 June) . . Page.. 2034 ..
MR SMYTH (continuing):
compulsory third party insurance. Any accident would be the responsibility of those involved in the accident, unless it could be proved that it was, in fact, the fault of the road.
Drug offences-court orders
MR OSBORNE: Mr Speaker, I thought the question by Mrs Burke was out of order too. I do not know how Mr Humphries could have answered it without reflecting on a vote of the Assembly. My question is to the minister for health and corrective services. It is a combined question. Minister, I draw your attention to comments made by Supreme Court Justice Madgwick, who criticised elements of your department-drug rehabilitation officials, to be exact-for failing to enforce drug offence related court orders. He said that the ACT had a liberal sentencing regime which favoured the rehabilitation approach to drug offenders, which I think most of us agree with, but that the whole system and the community were let down when there was not proper enforcement of these court orders.
My question is: are you aware of this judge's comments, and what steps have you taken to ensure that this does not happen again?
MR MOORE: Mr Osborne, I read those comments in the newspaper, and it is my intention to follow them up to make sure we are following those court orders in an effective way. I am not familiar with this judge. I presume he is a judge visiting from elsewhere. When people from elsewhere comment on our system and give us suggestions on how to improve it, we need to take those suggestions on board and make sure we are working to improve the system.
It is interesting to look at last week's statistics from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare on our regime for dealing with drugs in the ACT and particularly on outcomes with regard to cannabis. Under the much harsher or more prohibitionist regimes operating in the Northern Territory and Western Australia, the increase in the number of people using cannabis is much greater than in the ACT, Victoria and South Australia. That is just one area. There are lots of ways in which we are doing very well. The judge has highlighted a problem, and it is something we will pursue.
Lyneham tennis centre
MR CORBELL: My question is to the Minister for Urban Services. On Thursday of last week, in answer to a question, the minister told the Assembly that payments to creditors of the developer of the Lyneham tennis centre redevelopment had begun. The minister said that Mr Dawes, on behalf of MBA members, has been receiving cheques from Mr Hanna and that the payments have started to flow. Will the minister confirm the total value of cheques that have been paid to creditors and the total value of any outstanding amounts?
MR SMYTH
: That is not our responsibility. It is the responsibility of the proponents to come to an arrangement. What the government sought to do when it put the condition into the settlement and the call-in of the Lyneham tennis centre was to break the deadlock, and that is what it has achieved. Mr Dawes was at a meeting at which Mr Corbell and I were last night and I asked him how it was going. He said that he
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .