Page 675 - Week 05 - Wednesday, 5 July 1989
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
reference of this committee are similarly narrow. It is proposed by Mr Collaery to have a proponent of the Bill from the Liberal Party, and even in the heat of the moment Mr Collaery could not bring himself to call it the Opposition; a member of the Residents Rally party - I presume that is what RR means, not Rolls Royce - and one other member. Dare I say that the other member might be yet another lawyer, that we could have here a committee of three persons, two of whom are almost certain to be lawyers, to examine the technical detail of the Bill before us, which is less than a page long?
What is that technical committee to do about the underlying social problems that the Bill claims to address? What is that technical committee to do about the problems of youth unemployment, of disaffection amongst young people and of street behaviour, which are supposed to be giving rise to the very problems that the Bill addresses?
That technical committee, I put to you, Mr Speaker, will be looking at the technical aspects of drafting of this Bill, as Mr Collaery has already foreshadowed. I believe probably one of the major reasons why he has put forward this motion is in order to get some committee going which has the capacity to look at the technical detail of Bills rather than, as he has claimed, to express an interest in the social problems and actually preventing crimes by looking at the underlying problems which may or may not exist.
Mr Speaker, I have proposed a much broader reference to the Standing Committee on Social Policy which aims to look at those kinds of problems. It aims to get that Social Policy Committee, which is representative of this Assembly, whether we like it or not, to look at public behaviour, in particular in and around shopping centres, bus interchanges and other places of public entertainment. I have asked in my reference for that committee to make an assessment of the nature and extent of the problems that exist there and to look at the need for remedial action. I believe that we need a broad based inquiry on this matter. I believe that the last thing we need is a technical review of an already inadequate piece of legislation, and that is what we are being asked to support in Mr Collaery's motion.
Mr Speaker, in relation to a matter that I have also raised with you - I am not sure how strong the ground is that I am on here - I would refer the Assembly to the standing orders, particularly from standing order 215 onwards, which refer to the composition of committees. One of the items in there is standing order 217, which says that the Assembly really cannot appoint select committees to look into matters which are within the responsibility of an existing standing committee.
I would argue, Mr Speaker, that the questions of public behaviour, street behaviour, and the kinds of situations that may or may not give rise to a need for move-on powers
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .