Page 2758 - Week 09 - Thursday, 27 September 2007

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Hopefully then, also, we will have had the benefit of the experience of the police over the coming weeks in terms of their investigations and in terms of their own analysis of the trends and the behaviour. The police do have and can build at a given time quite significant bodies of intelligence and monitoring that can be used to better understand this behaviour as well. I think it would be incumbent on us to have that information at our disposal as well.

So it is not bloody-mindedness on the government’s part, but it is very much a recognition that we need to develop a stronger base of knowledge before we go down this extremely ambitious and broad-ranging proposal that Mr Pratt has brought to the table today. That is the reason the government will not be supporting the amendments proposed by Mr Smyth.

Mr Smyth’s amendments negatived.

Question put:

That Mr Corbell’s amendment be agreed to.

The Assembly voted—

Ayes 8		Noes 5
Mr Barr	Mr Gentleman	Mrs Dunne	Mr Smyth
Mr Berry	Mr Hargreaves	Mr Mulcahy
Mr Corbell	Ms Porter	Mr Pratt
Dr Foskey	Mr Stanhope	Mr Seselja

Question so resolved in the affirmative.

MR PRATT (Brindabella) (11.34): Mr Speaker, I do thank Mr Corbell for his contribution to the debate; I thought there were some very, very good points raised. It is pleasing that we can come into this place today and raise what is an urgent and dangerous matter and see the government come down with a number of ideas of its own and contributing to that debate. So I do thank the government, and I thank all who participated in this debate.

If I may pick up on a couple of points just before we close, the minister has said that the law as it now stands is sufficient to meet requirements. Well, the opposition does not believe that. The minister quite rightly has pointed out, for example, that over the weekend I did say that one has to wonder whether people caught red-handed in the act of throwing missiles at moving vehicles should, indeed, not be charged with attempted murder. Mr Corbell is quite right, and perhaps the opposition raising that reflects our frustration with the law as it now stands. The law as it now stands does not cover discretely the concerns that we see in this growing trend of rock throwing and concrete block dropping onto vehicles.

The minister is correct; we recognise that you can get up to 10 years imprisonment for interfering with property and interfering with transportation—or interfering with conveyancing, as it is so colourfully put. And, yes, you could apply under law an

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