Page 2145 - Week 07 - Thursday, 16 June 1994
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would only benefit the community to stop taking all their money. It is not as if they will not spend it. They will spend it on something else, and it will circulate through society. We will all benefit. We do not need to tell them what to do with it. Our society would be far more prosperous, and I think most people know it. Politicians certainly are not going to vote that way for a little while yet, but things are changing. It will come.
This is a very important matter. We cannot have a situation where we keep changing the rules. Fancy two instances in one day! We would have to go into the Guinness Book of Records on this one.
Mr De Domenico: We have not finished yet.
MR STEVENSON: That is right; the day is but young. Mr Humphries said that the Opposition would agree with the general retrospectivity, but not in regard to a case already before the court. That should not even need to be said. I do not agree with the first point. No-one should disagree with the second. Mr Lamont stood up and made a point. Where is he?
Mr De Domenico: He is over there with Ms Szuty.
MR STEVENSON: There he is. He stood up and made a point strongly, in a loud voice, and he made it again and again. He talked about businesses and money, all this money. He said that these particular companies are worth a lot of money to us. So, because of that, we will change the law for them. Is that the correct principle? I suggest not. If we have a lot of people who think that way, we are in real trouble.
Mr Berry: Who provides the services?
MR STEVENSON: Who provides the services? Businesses. If you make a mistake when in business you wear it. You should wear it. Say a business makes a mistake and, because they have a couple of hit men, they decide not to pay the money. They send someone around to make an offer that is too good to refuse. Is that not, in fact, what we are doing here? We are saying that the New South Wales Supreme Court was wrong.
Mr Humphries: For us it is legal.
MR STEVENSON: At the moment it is the law. We are changing the law. We are saying that the law was wrong, and we are going to prove it at the point of a gun. When I say "at the point of a gun", is that not the truth? If people do not do what we want we fine them, and if they do not pay we go and collect it. If they try to resist we arrest them, and if they resist arrest we will shoot them. We are the only people, supposedly legitimately, who have power to enforce at the point of a gun.
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