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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 2 Hansard (27 February) . . Page.. 614 ..

MR MOORE (continuing):

women to hire a male stripper. They arrive there, the male stripper does his stripping thing and, lo and behold, the business finds that they have a performance going on in their establishment, which could be taken in by this Bill. My guess is that this is not what Mr Humphries has in mind at all, that he was trying specifically to tackle a particular business. In doing that, with this fairly hastily put together legislation, he has cast a much wider net. That is the difficulty of dealing with this sort of legislation so quickly. We do not want to cast a wider net; nor do we want a situation where we have our Attorney-General as a moral guardian of the city.

Speaking of moral guardians and wowserism, we also see an amendment to the Liquor (Amendment) Act to extend the trial time for an extra six months or so. This Assembly agreed, and I was one of the people who agreed, to a trial so that we could carry out an academic exercise to ascertain the impact of 4.00 am closing. The status quo, as far as I am concerned, is that we do not have a closing hour; we do not have 4.00 am closing. We should return to the status quo now that the research part of the trial has been conducted. We should look at the results of the trial and ask, "Has there really been a marked increase in benefit to the society? Has there been a marked decrease in crime? Has there been a marked change towards a healthier society?".

If the report shows us that those things have happened, I am happy to consider that issue on its merits. I am happy for Mr Humphries to come to us and say, "Right; we want to introduce 4.00 am closing", or the report may recommend 3.00 am closing, and provide arguments and evidence for that.

Mr Osborne: Or midnight.

MR MOORE: Or midnight, as Mr Osborne interjects. These are issues, though, that we do not need to deal with today. We should adjourn this legislation and give Mr Humphries time to double-check just how widely this net is cast on the moral guardian clause, clause 4 of the Bill, and also the wowser clause, clause 5. That is what we should be considering at the next sitting, and not before then. I understand that by the next sitting the very competent people Mr Humphries appointed to do this trial will have their report ready. If the report is not ready then, we can debate it at the sitting after that. There is simply no reason to rush on this.

I think it is most appropriate that this debate be adjourned or, if it is not adjourned, it should be voted against. If it is not lost in principle, we should take clause 4 and remove it, and we should take clause 5 and, at the very minimum, reduce the time back to April or May. It seems to me that this is hasty legislation, with no reason behind it to be hasty - unlike the piece of legislation we dealt with this morning - that provides an unwarranted power to the Government, and particularly to the Attorney-General, to become the moral guardian of this city, which is something we ought not to do.

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