Page 2709 - Week 09 - Tuesday, 16 September 2014
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video
government that we have not seen, and therefore, by virtue of the fact we are coming back next week to go through the detail stage, it would make sense to me that we deal with this in one chunk when the opposition has the ability to actually see the full entirety of this bill, because, as is so often the case, the devil is in the detail. Secondly, the bill does seem inconsistent with other jurisdictions’ approaches, and I will deal with each of those issues in turn.
We are being asked to deal with a bill today that is going to be debated in principle, but it is not the eventual bill that we are going to pass. We do not know the extent of the amendments that are being drafted. We know that they are coming. Do they change the intent of the bill in a significant way? We simply do not know the answer to that, so I am being asked, and the opposition is being asked today, to support a piece of legislation that we do not have all the details for and is not necessary.
It seems ludicrous that we would be asked to do that and then come back next week for the detail stage, to go through this process again when we do have that before us, and we have not been provided with an adequate explanation as to why that is occurring. So to do so is just poor process, and I think it is irresponsible of us when we could do it in its entirety next week.
The second point is that the bill is inconsistent with New South Wales and actually comes in after New South Wales have just assessed their own legislation. The New South Wales bill does not have some of the elements that this bill does with regard to security and crowd control, and their ticket reselling part does have differences in approach, but in the New South Wales parliament they felt sufficiently doubtful that they have referred their bill to committee for review.
We are an island in New South Wales. There is a reality that people from Queanbeyan and, obviously, from the outlying areas—perhaps they will come down from Sydney as well—will attend major events in Canberra. Let us hope that they do. The intent of these major events is to encourage people, particularly from New South Wales, to come here.
So not looking at, not addressing and not considering what New South Wales are doing smacks of poor policy to me. Their bill is in committee, and it seems rash to me that we would not wait to see what the learnings are, what it is that their committee is going to look at, both positively and negatively, for us to wait for that process to unfold so that we can then incorporate the relevant aspects of that into our legislation. We are not saying, “Stop.” We are not saying, “Don’t do this.” We are saying, “Let us have a better process for doing this instead of rushing in and going off half cocked while the government is drafting amendments to its own bill.”
That said, there are a number of issues that are going to be considered in this bill, which I will go through. There are four main areas that are being addressed, as has been outlined by Minister Barr today. There is event security, which includes search on entry; seizure powers; direction to move-on powers; crowd control, which includes the ability to seize prohibited items; and interfering with event fines, rather than just ejection and personal bans for serial pests. There are commercial and marketing restrictions, ranging from exclusive rights in a designated “clean zone”; no street
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video