Page 2184 - Week 06 - Wednesday, 9 May 2012
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I believe a tremendous responsibility will fall upon the minister and the government to develop and implement the intentions of what is before us today.
I believe this is a big task and we are charging the government with a huge responsibility—in fact, too big a responsibility. I do not believe we are demonstrating good governance as a legislature by discharging so many details and decisions to the public service. The Canberra Liberals will not be supporting the proposed legislation.
MS BRESNAN (Brindabella) (10.44), in reply: I thank Mr Corbell and the government in particular for their support of these very important changes to the ACT traffic fine payment system. I will go to some of Mr Coe’s comments initially and then some of the other things he raised I will address in more detail in my speech. I thank him for supporting the principle of having a more flexible system of traffic fines. As to some of his concerns, I note that we had what I thought was quite a productive meeting with Mr Coe in his office. He said we should have discussed further the system around being able to perform community service. This bill has been on the table for quite some time and we also made it clear to Mr Coe we were more than happy to discuss any issues the opposition might have or amendments they might have. We have not received anything from them. In fact, we did not know until Mr Coe actually spoke today what the Liberals’ position would be. So I take issue with being told that we had not provided enough time or had not been willing to discuss this issue. We have been more than willing to do that and there has been more than enough time to discuss any issues the Liberal Party may have had with this bill.
In terms of the waiver, again, this is something we discussed with Mr Coe. It is in very limited circumstances, I must point out, and it is particularly for people who have a major disability which would preclude them from being able to undertake community work. That is why we have it; it is only in very limited circumstances.
There has been somewhat of a mixed message on this particular bill, but the penalty still applies to people and the fine still applies. They have to demonstrate that they are paying it back or they are performing community service. The penalty still stands; that is not removed. It is actually about providing people with flexibility in paying something for which in normal circumstances they would not lose their licences. That is the point of this legislation.
Mr Corbell made a point about developing the community service program. I think it is important that we do not have too much detail in this legislation because it allows for that consultation with the community organisations that need to be involved in the process. That is what is really important about developing this.
I point out that the ACT is the only state that does not have this sort of scheme, and Mr Corbell pointed to New South Wales in particular. We are not doing something which is radical or has not been done before. We have plenty of examples to look to and to put in place a system learning from examples and learning from issues that have come up in other states. That is to our advantage with this particular legislation.
I will go to the changes being passed in the legislation today. We will see reform of a system that has been operating inequitably and causing real hardship in the
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