Page 786 - Week 03 - Tuesday, 1 April 2008
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job properly. That is what this would do. It bolsters an initial attempt—not a marvellous one, but at least an attempt—by the minister to have an on-the-spot fine regime. These two amendments alone take his 30 per cent of the way probably up to about 80 or 90 per cent. These are the areas where the police, on a daily basis, feel the need to have an infringement notice provision.
I again hark back to what I said earlier to the minister. It is an infringement notice. What it means is that they are not going to have a record. If someone is being an absolute goose—they have drunk too much, they have got themselves into a fight or they are being absolutely obnoxious—and they get an infringement notice for this, more likely than not they will wake up in the morning with a hangover and pay the infringement notice. But if they dispute it, just like if you dispute a traffic offence of any sort where you get an infringement notice, you can go to court, have your day in court and dispute it. That does not stop this happening.
I think the minister is quite wrong. He talks about a mental aspect. Where is the mental aspect in two people having a fight? It is fairly simple. You swing a punch; someone else swings a punch. They are probably absolutely blotto. You end up on the ground. They are fairly uselessly knocking each other around. That is very different from someone doing an actual assault under that part of the Crimes Act.
In fact, you probably need less mental aspect to that than urinating. At least if you are a male and you urinate, you have got to unzip your fly or do something with your trousers, pull out that part of your equipment and off you go. That is too much detail, but I think you get the gist of what I am saying in terms of a mental aspect. I think there is probably less in fight in a public place than there is in urinating.
Similarly, the law is quite clear—and there are numerous cases of what constitutes offensive behaviour—and is well known to the police. They are probably the best people to judge on the spot, like they have to judge on the spot so much before they take action, and issue an infringement notice. This Assembly should give them the trust that they need, that they deserve and that they have in other places—police forces with probably not quite as good a reputation as ours in administering these things quite successfully—to administer simple laws such as this.
Whilst it is pleasing that the minister at least has gone some of the way, he has ignored his rank and file officers. He has ignored them. I can see why he has ignored them. There is a great conflict there. It is the classic problem, I think, certain people in the Labor Party, especially those members of the left, have in terms of any law and order issue. There is this great conflict of what to do and this overemphasis, and an unreasonable one, in terms of trying to find problems that do not actually exist when you could actually have very sensible legislation here.
This is sensible legislation. This would give the police something that all of the ones I spoke to want to see. These amendments would significantly improve this legislation. They would make it twice as effective. They would enable some real deterrents to be out there. They would assist, too, in terms of things like the minister’s announcement of a liquor review. That is great, but the police could use these on-the-spot fines, say, inside a liquor establishment. It does not have to be outside. It is very effective, a few
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