Page 3349 - Week 10 - Thursday, 19 October 2006
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The difference between the ordinary, decent, law-abiding people and the people they might complain about is not about evil and so on; it is about life circumstances. I think that there but for the grace of God—and we would all be ordinary, decent, law-abiding people. There are times when criminalising criminal behaviour is appropriate, but criminalising antisocial behaviour is a danger. I believe the Liberals in Victoria have promised to go down that road, but it is something I want to warn against here.
I appreciate Mr Stefaniak talking about and praising the community development approach that has been taken in the Bega and ABC flats. I have seen at first hand how important that is. It is a lot of work and it involves investment. It also involves designing spaces in a way that community outcomes are enhanced and not made more difficult to achieve.
I will speak just briefly about the rise of the antisocial behaviour order. I hope we do not go down that road here. I will quote from a paper written by Stan Winford, who is a lawyer and policy project officer in the Fitzroy Legal Service. I mention this because it is part of the Liberal Party platform in Victoria. I fear that we have osmosis between the states, and that might happen. It says that antisocial behaviour orders originated in the United Kingdom under the Crime and Disorder Act in 1998, became operational in 1999, and have been amended by the Police Reform Act of 2002 and the Antisocial Act of 2003.
What they can do is ban any individual, including young people over 10 years of age, both from carrying out specific acts and from entering certain geographical areas. They last a minimum of two years, but can be imposed for longer periods of time. They are made against individuals if they are deemed to have behaved in an antisocial manner that caused or was likely to cause harassment, alarm or distress.
Indeed, that is the kind of thing that I believe people are concerned about happening at the Red Hill shops. I would ask that governments look at other means before they introduce these, because they have the ability to be used against certain groups of people. I have had constituents from the indigenous community come to me and talk about how young Aboriginal men are so much more likely to be picked up just for being in a place—not for doing anything in particular but just for being there.
What happens is that a sense of harassment arises that then, in itself, can lead to antisocial behaviour, and that might go further into criminal behaviour. I am not saying that is inevitable, but if you exclude people and target them, you certainly set up a scene that is used to do that.
What happens in Britain is that, once people breach an antisocial behaviour order, they can be jailed for up to five years for conduct that would not normally be considered criminal. It says that by June 2005 almost 6,500 ASBOs had been issued in the UK and that the number ordered continues to rise exponentially each year.
Of course, what a fantastic mechanism for keeping the streets empty of people who might have troubling behaviours: people who are mentally ill, people who are drug dependent, people who are homeless. We heard just today of a survey that shows that too
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