Page 5299 - Week 14 - Thursday, 19 November 2009
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MS BURCH: The Cormie family are very caring and responsible pet owners. They had taken all precautions to ensure that their animals would be protected during the prescribed times for discharging fireworks. They had all their dogs well secured in their backyard. They had timed their absence from their house so they would be back in time to care for their pets.
Snozzie was only one of four dogs that died this past fireworks night. Members are aware that the previous two Queen’s Birthday long weekend celebration seasons were the worst recorded by the Office of Regulatory Services for complaints: more animals were reported lost, more animals were reported as injured and more animals were reported as being killed as a result of fireworks. However, the lost, killed or injured animal statistics are only those reported by animal lovers and pet owners. As such, those statistics can only ever be seen as the tip of the iceberg for injuries and deaths of pets and urban native wildlife as a result of fireworks.
I call for the Assembly to support this regulation.
MR CORBELL (Molonglo—Attorney-General, Minister for the Environment, Climate Change and Water, Minister for Energy and Minister for Police and Emergency Services) (11.51): The interesting approach adopted by the opposition on this matter is one that can only be characterised as extraordinary hypocrisy or, if not hypocrisy, then simple populism. We have seen since 2003 a position from the Liberal Party that opposed the sale of shop-bought fireworks in the territory. They went to the last election with a policy of opposing the sale of shop-bought fireworks in the territory. Now, today, they are going to reverse six or seven years of a consistent policy position, but on what argument?
The bottom line is that they do not have an argument. They have got a Facebook site. That might say a lot about how the Liberal Party operates generally, because we know how enamoured they are of Facebook as a medium, even when it libels and denigrates other members of this place. But they have no other argument. The fig leaf that Mrs Dunne stands behind to protect her otherwise incredibly embarrassing completely exposed position is the argument of enforcement—if only there was better enforcement there would not be a need for that. Well, the challenge with enforcement, of course, is that unless you adopt the Steve Pratt doctrine of policing—that is, there is police officer stationed in front of every letterbox at every house in this city, 24 hours a day, seven days a week—you are not going to be in a position to effectively deal with breaches of the law.
What we have in these circumstances is a legal product—shop-bought fireworks—which are being abused, but they are freely and easily available. They were sold widely; it was easy to purchase them. But, unfortunately, it was just as easy to abuse them. Members should know, particularly those on the opposition benches, that if you want to prosecute somebody, you need to have sufficient evidence to do so. You need a strong evidentiary base to prosecute in these circumstances. You need, basically, to catch people in the act, and it is not just the neighbour catching a person in the act; it needs to be someone who is able to mount the charge and present it to the court, and there needs to be sufficient documentary evidence to back it up.
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