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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 8 Hansard (29 August) . . Page.. 2597 ..
MS TUCKER (continuing):
An offence of behaving in a way likely to cause serious alarm and embarrassment to someone else could cover any behaviour at all. What does embarrassment mean? Which people are going to be designated as the thought police to decide on what behaviours are embarrassing?
There are issues here which have quite serious implications. There are obviously going to be some groups in civil society who because of the international spotlight during the Olympics want to raise issues around particular causes they are committed to. I have recently been working with people who have been intimidated and victimised by the regime in China.
I know that when the Falun Gong group meditate outside the Chinese Embassy it is seen to be an embarrassment to China. China is extremely sensitive about that and they would like to stop it. Fortunately, we live in a free country and these people are able to practise their meditation, even though there is a growing number of reports of attempts by Chinese officials intimidate these people, even though they live in Australia.
Because of this element of community action associated with the Olympics, we have to understand that legislation like this will have an impact on it. I am very unhappy with Mr Humphries waving around at the last minute a map which I could not see from here. He tells me I can look at it, but this is another example of how poor this process is.
We would like to know exactly what areas are being designated around the Olympic venue. That will be a place where people could choose to make their point on particular issues. This law is going to cover whatever is designated around Olympic venues. We will have to look at that map afterwards. I do not know whether the map is a disallowable instrument. It may be. However, we can have that debate when we look at the prohibited items.
We have concerns about the government's legislation, although we recognise attempts need to be made to ensure the safety of people in Olympic events. There are unanswered questions. The legislation is vague. In respect of search of personal property, the legislation says an authorised person "may" ask. Mr Humphries told us today that everybody is going to have a personal property search. It is unclear about the metal detector. That is not covered in the legislation. The prohibited items we are going to debate about next week.
All in all, it is not a satisfactory process. I believe that this legislation is more extreme than it needs to be. We do not know which items have been declared prohibited items by SOCOG and which items the ACT minister's officials have decided should be prohibited items. I look forward to knowing that. I am quite concerned about some of those prohibited items in terms of civil liberties issues, but we can have that debate next week.
MR BERRY
(6.21): I want to speak about a particular group of people who could be affected by Mr Rugendyke's amendment. Mr Stanhope and others in this place have raised weighty issues in relation to civil liberties and attempts to categorise all of the offences that might be committed at an Olympic event. The proposed offences include causing serious alarm, affront or embarrassment and using indecent, offensive, insulting or threatening language. I wonder how the police might pick up a bit of German or one of the Chinese dialects. A German person visiting the Olympic games might refer to the
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