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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2001 Week 7 Hansard (20 June) . . Page.. 2140 ..

MR MOORE (continuing):

creating a problem. The police were there. They were doing a very good job, I have to say. In fact, I was breathalysed, along with everybody else, as I drove through in my Tarago, with mag wheels. It did not get the same looks as the other cars.

These people are not creating a problem. What we would be doing, Mr Rugendyke, is allowing you to bring back a piece of legislation inappropriately in order to hand to the police a power which really belongs to the courts. That is a fundamental principle as far as I am concerned. Therefore, it is inappropriate to allow you to do that within a calendar year. The standing orders are there to prevent that happening for a specific reason. There will be times when it is appropriate to suspend them, but this is not one of them. Good luck with it next year after the election, Mr Rugendyke.

MS TUCKER (10.52): I also will not be supporting what Mr Rugendyke is trying to do this morning. The Greens made their votes perfectly clear on the issues of burnouts and road rage. Mr Rugendyke likes the idea of taking away cars even though, particularly with road rage, it could have a quite negative impact on innocent people because, obviously, it is not the car that is doing the raging, it is the person driving the car. The burnout legislation was not thought through and I would not support this matter being brought up again within this calendar year. We have those sorts of rules in this Assembly for a particular reason.

MR BERRY (10.53): First of all, I wish to acknowledge the workers from Totalcare who are on strike today as a result of redundancies which have been forced upon them by the government's withdrawal of the housing contract from Totalcare. May I say that that was no accident, either.

I stand opposed to what Mr Rugendyke is on about here. I have heard Mr Rugendyke complain in the past when issues have arisen that nobody had come to him about them. I have to say to Mr Rugendyke that nobody came to me about this matter, either. If he had, I would have said, "Go away; we are not going to support you," because he knows my position in relation to this matter, and he knows the Labor Party's position.

These sorts of police powers impact on young people and poor people and I do not think that they advantage us in any way. I am told that a police officer who is involved in the summary confiscation of somebody's car is off shift for half a day dealing with the issue. That is not a sensible use of police resources, in my view, but it has a most offensive impact on the community. Summary offences are to be avoided at all costs. I believe in the courts having powers to deal with these sorts of matters, but only the courts. It is not up to police officers to deal with these issues. I know that Mr Rugendyke has tried to make a point about an incident at Latham Oval. That involved a vandal on a paddock, not in a public street. To use that as some sort of example of why you need burnout powers is a little disingenuous.

We will not be supporting this motion for all the reasons we have expressed in the past. We do not like summary powers. We do not like having the powers of confiscation imposed on car owners. We do not think that that will bring about a better result for the community in the long term. Most importantly of all, we do not think that it will improve the relationship between police and the community.

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