Page 2756 - Week 09 - Thursday, 27 September 2007
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welcomed, as opposed to the lack of activity from Mr Hargreaves. But the point is, if we do not do this together and if all arms of government are not brought to the same table to ensure that we are looking at all the options, we will fail. It does involve, I suspect, a lot of work with youth workers getting out into the community and actually finding out what is the cause of this. The Bureau of Criminology does a lot of good work, and perhaps the independent study could be referred to that body which has so much experience in analysing the root cause of crime. If we can address the problem, there also may be the positive side effect that it addresses other problems as well.
It was a challenge thrown down by Mr Hargreaves. Mr Pratt has responded; the opposition has responded. We put forward a number of solutions here. We have got a list of ideas. We have done our work; we have done our research; we have responded. We welcome Mr Corbell’s response, but we simply ask that, rather than gut the motion—which is the effect of Mr Corbell’s amendment—the government take on board what the opposition has proposed, which is to include the government’s proposals with ours so that we send a very strong word to the community that this Assembly is willing to work together to ensure that we get the best outcome that we can for those who travel using public transport and, indeed, private transport. It is not just buses that are involved. There were instances recently on a Saturday night where rocks were thrown at cars. So it is not just a problem affecting public transport; it also affects private transport, so it affects all of the community.
We need to come up with solutions to deal with those that do this. Ultimately, if it leads to stronger penalties and more legislation, in a way, that would be unfortunate, but, if it is necessary, then we should not balk at doing that either. I notice Morris Iemma has recently said that the penalties in New South Wales would go up because they want to send a firm message. The other thing is that then we need to look at the education messages that we send out to ensure that they do not lead to more copycat crimes, and that they actually lead to people seriously considering what will happen to them and, particularly, what will happen to others should they throw rocks at moving buses and at moving vehicles.
I commend my amendments to the Assembly, Mr Speaker. I welcome Mr Corbell’s amendment, but hope that it just does not become all that is left of the motion. I thank Mr Pratt for putting this motion on the notice paper today. It is an important issue; it is something that the Assembly, working together, can address.
MR PRATT (Brindabella) (11.23): Mr Speaker, in speaking to Mr Smyth’s amendments, I would like to indicate that I support and welcome the spirit of Mr Corbell’s amendment. But, like Mr Smyth, I would rather see Mr Corbell’s amendment value added, so to speak, to the motion that we are proposing. Very simply, I would say this: I think Mr Corbell’s identification of the sociological and psychological reasons as a primary issue is, indeed, a very important one. It does overlap some of the issues that we were looking at as well. We have also said that those reasons are very important. This is not about just taking punitive action and punitive action only. It is so much more important to identify why this trend is evolving.
Of course, there is a long debate about the situation we have now with a growing number of disaffected youth as a consequence of broken families. The situation with
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