Page 687 - Week 05 - Wednesday, 5 July 1989
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will be doing and bringing in parts of it at a time because it cannot all be done. Housing is so complex - we have the homeless youth, the people who are struggling on the market at the moment with high interest rates, the people who need public housing, and the people who are aged and need it. Housing is a broad spectrum, as this is. I do not think it can be discussed in that short time, and with four lawyers. It frightens me to think there are to be all lawyers on it. My God! The thought of that frightens me. I have seen this enough in courts. That really frightens me - and a lot of them started off in the police force, and that frightens me even more.
Mr Jensen: So did Bill Hayden.
MRS GRASSBY: Fair enough, I will accept that one. So, Mr Speaker, I cannot support this motion, as my party cannot support it. I feel that this is the wrong way to go about it.
DR KINLOCH (11.54): Mr Speaker, I certainly welcome the discussion of civil liberties from both sides of this house and also welcome the concern about public danger. Both of these issues should be in front of us, as they are, and as I hoped they would be and will be in front of a select committee, and as I hope they will be and would be when that select committee puts in its report and we again have a democratic debate, as we have had this morning, and come to some decision. So I see no real danger in a select committee. I would have no objection about making it larger, but it seems that a select committee has a group of three.
I speak here as a member of the Council for Civil Liberties. I would like to note that in the crowd yesterday, whatever one may say about it, there was one of the leaders of the Civil Liberties Council. I would hope that that council would put its views to the select committee. I am very pleased indeed to notice Mr Stefaniak including amendments and changes to his Bill which are very careful about civil liberties, and I think that is central to what is going on here.
Might I just refer to a meeting that some of us had with Assistant Police Commissioner Brian Baker and several others, and I thank Mr Speaker and Mr Stefaniak for arranging that. It did not seem to me that they were putting on some kind of public relations display. I was very impressed by them. I listened to them with care. They were very frank in this chamber, sitting just over there, answering questions. There were many members of the Assembly or their staff there. I did not see dangerous people, people who are about to engage in police brutality. Indeed what I saw were people who were very anxious indeed to avoid it.
So I think we should be particularly pleased about the police in this Territory and treat them with some
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