Page 681 - Week 05 - Wednesday, 5 July 1989
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But I think it became clearer to me after that experience, and it was a stark reminder to me, that these police powers, however amended, will focus on youth, the disadvantaged, the unemployed and those ordinary street people who treat public places as their space - people who can see outside the Volvo door, Mr Stefaniak, and who are not able to take trips down to the coast of a weekend, the ones whose space is the street. I think what this Assembly ought to do is face up to its responsibility and let us have a lash at dealing with the in-principle debate so that you can all be shown up by supporting this sort of legislation instead of ducking behind closed doors and shoving it off to a committee. Deal with it in the in-principle debate, and let us deal with the real social problems in the form of the motion which will be put forward by the Chief Minister later.
MR KAINE (Leader of the Opposition) (11.35): Mr Speaker, I must say that I am totally confused by the Government's approach to this subject. It has done everything and debated everything except the point of the legislation, which is the protection of people who want to travel and move around this city, day or night, without fear of assault or harassment in any form. That is what the Bill is about, and the Government has debated everything but that. Its attitude seems to me to be totally ambivalent and totally astray.
I would like to deal with a few of the matters that the Government has brought up during this debate. First of all, Mr Wood talked about the overwhelming number of references to committees. The Government does not have any problem about referring things to committees. I brought this matter up the other day, that one of our Ministers referred the matter of garbage collection to one of our committees. She has an entire department behind her that should be capable of coming up with a method of garbage collection, but she chooses to impose that inquiry on a committee of this Assembly.
With all of the lack of resources that Mr Wood is talking about, the lack of time that members have and their commitment to real issues, we are asked to take on an inquiry into garbage collection. But, of course, the Assembly is quite ambivalent on this. The public housing inquiry was not referred to a committee of this Assembly; that has been done by some other means, on which I am not clear because I have heard nothing about it since it was announced on the floor of the Assembly. I do not know whether the inquiry is taking place at all. So we are a bit ambivalent about what we do or do not refer to committees. We can refer garbage collection, but we cannot refer a matter of the safety of the individual citizens of this city. That is apparently inappropriate.
The Chief Minister raised the question of the number of members - three members - and said that it was perhaps inappropriate. I remind the Government that the first
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