Page 5717 - Week 13 - Thursday, 18 November 2010
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We agree with the government that strict liability is an appropriate amendment and should not be qualified with a due diligence offence.
We support the amendments that are proposed regarding technical changes to evidence provisions such as evidentiary certificates, evidence for insurance purposes, and the testing of people in situations other than on the roadside, such as by medical professionals. They are necessary amendments to allow successful prosecution.
The power to ensure that tests can be carried out simultaneously is an important amendment and we support it, as it has been made explicit in the legislation.
These technical and minor amendments made to the random roadside drug testing legislation are important but this does not diminish the value of the legislation. It must be remembered that we would not be at this stage, so close to the commencement of random roadside drug testing in the ACT, which is due to occur on 1 December, without the Canberra Liberals taking a stand on this issue. If we had waited for the government to respond to this glaring omission in our statutory framework, it is difficult to know how long we would have been waiting for.
I now move to address the provisions of the bill that amend the alcohol driving laws. Once again, we see this as an area in which the opposition have held the government to account and ensured that the government has acted to address and strengthen the drink driving laws. In May 2009, I called for action in this area. At that time we had just witnessed the worst ever result for drink driving offences in the ACT. Already, in May that year, we had surpassed the number of incidences of people caught for the whole of 2008. I called on the government at the time to address this grave concern and the fact that this had occurred was simply appalling and demonstrated, in my view, a failure in the Chief Minister’s leadership over successive years.
While I called for strong action for the government to consider a range of policy responses, the Chief Minister’s poorly considered and rushed response was simply to call for a name and shame policy. This measure is not included in the legislation today and I invite the Chief Minister to explain whether he realises that his approach was flawed or whether he still believes in this legislation and he is just unable to get it through his caucus. Thankfully today, we are going to see the more substantive elements of policy reform to RBT that I called for over 18 months ago.
At that time, in May 2009, I also made the point that having a serving minister who had been caught drink driving continue on as a minister sent a very poor message to the community regarding the government’s approach to drink driving and to road safety more generally. I am pleased to see that in the intervening period the minister, Mr Hargreaves, has been removed from cabinet but I question, as do many in the community, why it took so long.
I support the amendment before us today that reduces the blood alcohol limit for special drivers to zero. We are aware that concerns have been raised by the scrutiny of bills committee that the discrimination between special drivers and non-special drivers has not been adequately justified. The subsequent response by the government to this highlighted the research and the evidence in this area.
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