Page 184 - Week 01 - Wednesday, 13 February 2008
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that one is a very important recommendation, something we are looking at—further and further discussions with some of the stakeholders.
The other thing was general statements about police presence. We did have a representative of the AFPA there, and we had a discussion about the changed rosters that have been put in place. That was seen certainly by the police representative as a positive, and we will wait to see what kind of impact that has. But I think it is fair to say that there was a general feeling amongst the stakeholders that a better police presence after hours on Friday and Saturday nights around our licensed venues is an important part of it. They need to be seen and they need to be able to respond quickly to incidents of trouble.
I think those five things were the consensus of the afternoon discussion. I think, coming from that, there was some discussion of some of the other things on the table. The government’s proposal of random breath testing outside licensed venues was dismissed, I think, by everyone as unworkable and a poor use of police resources. I share that sentiment. I am not sure who came up with that idea, but I do not see that that is a good use of police resources. I do not think that having police with voluntary random breath testing and ascertaining that there are lots of drunk people in Civic or Manuka on a Friday and Saturday night really advances us anywhere. Particularly I would be concerned about the use of police resources to do that when they could actually be patrolling and taking care of troublemakers.
Mr Temporary Deputy Speaker, I think it was a really positive outcome. What we have undertaken out of that is to actually put forward some of those. There are some other things that we are working through. We as an opposition are now looking at the results of that, doing some analysis. We are going to look to put together a discussion paper which will be published and which will put forward some of the ideas, and some of those we may adopt as formal policies where that has not been done to date.
I think it has been a good approach. I think it is successful. I think engaging with the community, getting the answers from the community and working with them, meant we took some ideas there. Some of the ideas came from the floor. But I think that is the approach that will actually see progress.
I note the other work that has been done, and we are supportive of looking at liquor licensing issues, of trialling Nightlink. I think that will be part of it. I think there are a whole range of responses. I think what the real success of this roundtable was and why the community responded as well as it did was because it was a constructive process. There was not partisan point-scoring. We are happy for the government to take up some of these recommendations now because we want to see these issues addressed.
These issues are important for the people of Canberra, not just for our young people who are out regularly on a Friday and Saturday night. It is important that they are safe. Parents want to know that their kids are safe. Those of us who have been around Canberra for a while will remember certain nightspots. I remember the Private Bin and other establishments when I was regularly going out to nightspots, and some of them were quite violent places.
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