Full Day Hansard Transcript (Legislative Council, 23 September 1999, Corrected Copy)

The President (The Hon. Dr Meredith Burgmann) took the chair at 11.00 a.m.

The President offered the Prayers.

Message received from the Legislative Assembly agreeing to the Legislative Council’s
amendments.

Petition praying for opposition to the suffering of wild animals and their use in circuses, received from the Hon. R. S. L. Jones.

Petition praying that within one year of the presentation of the petition there be a ban on animal exploitation such as battery cages for hens, single stalls and farrowing crates for sows, feedlots for cattle and intensive housing for broilers, wildlife and other animals, received from the Hon. R. S. L. Jones.

Private Members' Business Item No. 2 postponed by the Hon. A. G. Corbett.

Debate resumed from 15 September.

The Hon. I. COHEN [11.10 a.m.], in reply: I thank honourable members, particularly the crossbenchers, who took the time to read these bills and to give considered contributions to the second reading debate. However, I am extremely disappointed that neither the Government nor the Opposition supports the bills, particularly when there is growing evidence that low-income tenants are indeed being discriminated against in the lead-up to the Olympics. Of course, there is ongoing discrimination regarding domestic violence and tenancy agreements, something that the Greens feel strongly about. It is a great disappointment that the bills have not received greater support from either of the major political parties.

The prospects for low-income tenants in Sydney is grim and is set to get a lot worse as we move closer to the Olympics. Real estate values are soaring and those on low incomes are being squeezed out of their chosen areas because they cannot afford to live there any more. As I mentioned in my second reading speech, homelessness rates have tripled in the past six years from approximately 9,000 to 27,000 across Sydney, according to the Homeless Persons Information Centre, run by the Sydney City Council. Also alarming is the growing number of violent attacks on homeless people; many are subjected to brutal attacks, some leading to death. In recent months four homeless people have been murdered in inner Sydney for no apparent reason except that they were homeless.

According to Shelter, more than 220 homeless people have died on the streets and parks of New South Wales in the past three years. A recent study of homeless people in the inner city of Sydney entitled "Down and Out in Sydney" found that 75 per cent of homeless people suffer a mental disorder, more than four times the national average. The study also found that many homeless people had a mental disorder due to drug and alcohol abuse. The Greens have no doubt that the situation will get a lot worse in the lead-up to and during the Olympics, despite the Government’s differing view. In relation to recent rent increases across Sydney, particularly in the Olympic corridor area, the Department of Housing’s rent and sales report for the June quarter stated:

Leichhardt had a number of increases in rent across the different dwelling types. The annual increase for all one and two bedroom dwellings was over 10% while four bedroom dwellings were 19% higher for the year and 20% higher for

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the quarter . . . annual increases in rent for one and two bedroom flats/units were 17% and 21% respectively.

Annual median rents for Concord two bedroom flats/units also increased by 20%.

The Government argues this is because of new additions to rental stock, primarily in the form of new apartments. This is misleading as cheaper housing stock would have to be removed to make way for the expensive new housing which is displacing low-income tenants in the area. The Government argues that there are no other Olympic-related rent increases in the Sydney property market. However, the data used to reach that conclusion is seriously flawed, and data from only the Rental Bond Board has been used.

Tenants can enter leases and have their rent go up at the end of a fixed term. If no new lease is entered into, the landlord cannot demand that the bond be topped up. Therefore, a tenants can experience a number of rent increases yet still have the initial bond lodged with the bond board. There seems to be some dispute between the author of those reports and the Government regarding what the reports actually mean. In a press release issued on 13 September Minister Watkins stated:

Six months of independent monitoring by University of Sydney academic Peter Phibbs and tenancy expert Robyn Kennedy has detected no Olympic-related rent increases in the Sydney property market.

The absence of unusual rent increases a year out from the Olympics is a good sign.

However, when questioned, Ms Kennedy was in conflict with the Minister’s position. She said that she and Mr Phibbs stood by their report of February last year for the Department of Fair Trading, which recommended that the Government legislate to protect tenants from eviction and excessive rent rises as a result of the Olympic Games. Ms Kennedy refused to express support for Minister Watkins’ claims of no Olympic impact on rents saying, "I can’t make any comment on his press release."

Despite the Government’s reports into the Olympics and rental market monitoring, there is evidence that tenant evictions have doubled in parts of Sydney in the past 12 months. For instance, the Eastern Area Tenants Service stated that in the past five months it has been contacted by 84 evicted tenants, compared with 31 during the same period last year. It is disgraceful that a Labor Government will not act by supporting the bill. By not supporting it the Government will leave some of the most vulnerable people exposed to the possibility of homelessness and even death in the lead-up to and during the Olympics. It really is outrageous that this Labor Government will not support the bill, particularly when the New South Wales Australian Labor Party housing policy states:

Labor believes that every Australian resident has a right to adequate and affordable accommodation.

If Labor really believes that, why does the Government not act to ensure that all residents impacted upon by the massive rent hikes and evictions in the lead-up to and during the Olympics are protected by legislation to reduce the prospect of that happening? The Greens have had overwhelming support from the community regarding the two bills. We have had dozens of letters of support for both bills and thousands of people have signed petitions supporting the Residential Tenancies Amendment (Olympic Games) Bill. I thank everyone who has sent letters of support and signed circulated petitions. On 16 September Shelter launched a report into housing, homelessness and the Olympics entitled "Ready! Set! Go!", which stated:

Increases in rents in the Olympic Corridor - from Parramatta to the City of Sydney - have been felt in the years leading up to the Olympics. Though analysts may debate about how much of this is Olympic related or not, the construction of new facilities and improved amenity around Homebush has undoubtedly been partly responsible. Developers marketing new apartments in Strathfield, Concord and beyond think so.

Tenancy advice services report excessive rent increases in some areas.

Shelter recommend 46 actions the Government should undertake to mitigate the problem of housing and homelessness during the Olympics. It makes three cornerstone recommendations, two of which are:

The Residential Tenancy Act 1987 should be amended to limit rent increases to one per year, replace the present "without grounds"termination of leases with "just cause" provisions, and more effectively control excessive rent increases.

A temporary rent cap should apply for a limited period in 2000. This would limit rent increases to the consumer price index.

The report also found that rents over the past five years have increased dramatically. In particular, in Leichhardt, rents have increased by 79 per cent, Concord by 70 per cent, and Strathfield by 47 per cent; compared with Parramatta, 19 per cent. In response to concerns raised by honourable members regarding the Residential Tenancies Amendment (Olympic Games) Bill, the Greens are willing to amend it to address those concerns. In response to concerns raised by the Opposition, we agree that the retrospective clauses of the bill should be removed
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so that the bill only takes effect after proclamation. We are prepared to reduce the sunset clause so that it only operates until 31 December 2000. We would limit the geographic coverage of the bill so that it does not cover the entire statistical division, but covers only the inner and middle rings of Sydney.

The Greens are prepared to amend the Residential Tenancies Amendment (Domestic Violence) Bill to make absolutely clear that the tribunal cannot make determinations regarding domestic violence. A person would have to obtain an apprehended violence order from a court before she or he could apply to the tribunal to have the residential tenancy agreement altered or terminated. The Greens offered to amend the bill to address the concerns of the Opposition.

However, the Government refused to support the domestic violence bill with amendments, despite saying in contributions to the second reading debate that it supported the thrust of both bills. One can glean what one likes from that! I now address some issues raised by the Government. Firstly, the Government stated that when the rent control is removed, catch-up rents would occur. The Greens cannot understand how the Government can reach that conclusion.

Once the Olympics are over many people will leave Sydney, investors will pull out and properties will be sold. Demand for rental properties will decrease. Atlanta experienced a decrease in rents and property prices after its Olympics, and the Greens fully expect the same to occur here. With regard to the argument about the consumer price rent increase control, this is not automatic. Landlords do not have to put their rent up under the legislation, it is not compulsory, therefore this argument has no merit whatsoever. I have already dealt with the issue of whether rent increases are occurring and are due to the Olympics; clearly the Greens disagree with the Government on this issue.

I turn now to the domestic violence bill. The Government states that it will not support this bill because the issue of residential tenancies and domestic violence is currently being reviewed by the Government, and because tenants experiencing domestic violence can already use sections 69A and 35 of the Act to determine residential agreements on the ground of undue hardship or section 35 which allows an occupant to be recognised as a tenant if the tenant no longer occupies the premises. However, the Greens are informed that those provisions, particularly section 69A, are little used. If the Government believes that these provisions are adequate it should embark on an advertising campaign to make advocates aware of the provisions.

The Greens are still of the view that it would be better to have the domestic violence provisions up front in the Residential Tenancies Act, easily workable and recognisable to all, rather than having to use the undue hardship provisions, which do not directly allude to domestic violence situations. This issue gets to the heart of the social fabric of the community and I am absolutely appalled at the lack of interest shown by the Minister on this matter. I am absolutely appalled that the Minister has not allowed me to meet with him to discuss this matter and that we have been given statistics that are highly relevant to the situation. The Minister is supposed to be a left-wing member of the Labor Government but he is ignoring issues of domestic violence and the rights of tenants, 35 per cent of people in the community. I find that appalling.

Motion by the Hon. I. M. Macdonald agreed to:

That the question be put on each bill seriatim.

Question - That the Residential Tenancies Amendment (Domestic Violence) Bill be now read a second time - put.

The House divided.

Mr Breen Rev. Nile
Dr Chesterfield-Evans Ms Rhiannon
Mr Cohen Mr Tingle
Mr Corbett Tellers,
Mr R. S. L. Jones Mr Oldfield
Mrs Nile Dr Wong

Mr Bull Mr Manson
Mr Della Bosca Mr Moppett
Mr Dyer Dr Pezzutti
Mr Gallacher Mr Ryan
Miss Gardiner Ms Saffin
Mr Gay Mr Samios
Mr Harwin Ms Tebbutt
Mr Hatzistergos
Mr M. I. Jones Tellers,
Mr Lynn Mr Jobling
Mr Macdonald Mr Primrose

Question resolved in the negative.

Motion negatived.

Question - That the Residential Tenancies Amendment (Olympic Games) Bill be now read a second time - put.

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The House divided.

Dr Chesterfield-Evans Ms Rhiannon
Mr Cohen Mr Tingle
Mr R. S. L. Jones Dr Wong
Mr Oldfield Tellers,
Mrs Nile Mr Corbett
Rev. Nile Mr Breen

Mr Bull Mr Macdonald
Ms Burnswoods Mr Manson
Mr Della Bosca Mr Moppett
Mr Dyer Dr Pezzutti
Mr Egan Mr Ryan
Mrs Forsythe Ms Saffin
Mr Gallacher Mr Samios
Miss Gardiner Mr Shaw
Mr Gay Ms Tebbutt
Mr Harwin
Mr Hatzistergos Tellers,
Mr M. I. Jones Mr Jobling
Mr Lynn Mr Primrose

Question resolved in the negative.

Motion negatived.

The Hon. Dr A. CHESTERFIELD-EVANS [11.38 a.m.]: I move:

That this bill be now read a second time.

I am pleased to introduce this bill on behalf of the Australian Democrats. The retirement of Mr Tony Harris as Auditor-General is a sad day for open and accountable government in New South Wales. Mr Harris was a thorn in the side of the Government because he asked questions that should be asked, without fear or favour. So it is with other people within government departments who discover that things are not quite right with regard to the spending of taxpayers money.

People who believe it is their moral duty to speak out have become known as whistleblowers. In late 1993 the Whistleblowers Protection Bill was introduced. That bill was referred to a committee and the committee’s report was tabled on 30 June 1993. Following further consultations and amendments the 1994 Protected Disclosures Bill was introduced by the then Attorney General, the Hon. J. P. Hannaford.

As with most legislation of this type, with competing interests, especially from the Government, compromises are struck. My predecessor the Hon. Elisabeth Kirkby had a number of concerns with the bill. My amending bill addresses those concerns and suggests appropriate amendments, although some have been modified after much discussion with the whistleblowers group. Good whistleblower legislation must protect the person making the disclosure and encourage public institutions to improve their processes and performances so that the need for such disclosures is minimised. Open government is not a tradition in Australia to the extent that it should be, and it certainly is not a tradition in New South Wales.

It is being further restricted as more services are contracted out by this spurious commercial in confidence concept. The Government effectively makes the deal, and the fact that a private sector company or interest is involved apparently is an excuse for the taxpayer not knowing where the money goes. The American tradition is that once a contract is let, those who are paying for it have a right to know what is happening; also other tenders are made public so that comparisons can be made and it can be confirmed that the process that awarded the tender was justified. In cases in which the preferred tenderer enters a negotiating deal with governments, there is a great opportunity for corruption and for venal decisions to be made. Clearly, from the point of view of taxpayers it is important to have an open government process.

People within the public sector have access to papers relating to decisions that are made by government. Whistleblowers come forward not out of a desire to advance their careers or interests but in the interests of protecting taxpayers money and of morality in government. The object of this bill is to enhance the rights of those who make protected disclosures; they are victimised by the system on which they are blowing the whistle. I shall cite two salient cases which galvanised me to work on this bill. I referred to the case of Cynthia Kardell in my adjournment speech on 26 November 1998. The Auditor-General’s Report to Parliament, volume 1, at page 109, states:

From August 1995 to February 1998, South Eastern Sydney Area Health Service . . . has been engaged before the Industrial Relations Court of Australia, New South Wales District Registry.

A former employee who claimed unfair dismissal initiated the proceedings against the Service on 14 August 1995.

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I shall not read it all. The bottom line was that Cynthia Kardell believed that the radiology department of a major hospital was being extremely poorly managed. She endeavoured to speak the truth about it, and she was dismissed. The Auditor-General’s report, at page 110, shows that $0.8 million was expended by the health service over three financial years to defend the matter. That figure is made up of $0.4 million on legal fees and $0.4 million on settlement costs, including staff management time. The Auditor-General said he could not advise Parliament whether those costs were reasonable. That is a polite way of saying that a lot of money was spent defending the South Eastern Sydney Area Health Service against what was clearly an unfair dismissal.

The court, in its decision of 8 September 1997, ordered that the employee be reappointed to the position she held immediately before the termination of her employment. The case was the longest to be heard before the Industrial Relations Court of Australia. It is quite outrageous to use taxpayers money to harass someone who tries to do the right thing. That is money badly spent, but it is available to be used at the discretion of the leaders of the organisation on which the whistle is being blown.

Whistleblowers can spend a fortune on legal fees defending an unfair dismissal, effectively crushing their careers, and sometimes their lives, because they have attempted to do the right thing. Settlement costs must also be taken into consideration, because once they have been given their jobs back the situation is insoluble and the victims are given money to go away. Their career prospects are often irreparably damaged because they tried to do the right thing. This bill attempts to remedy that issue.

I refer now to the case of Bob Taylor, who was employed by WorkCover. In 1991 he commented that the payouts were exceeding the premiums, which meant that the system had become unsustainable. The premium was 1.8 per cent of the wages. A graph on page 7 of the 1999 WorkCover report clearly shows the premium rate compared to scheme cost as a proportion of wages. One line represents the average premium rate and the other the projected scheme costs, and the two lines cross. In other words, in 1991 the system became unsustainable. Bob Taylor was working as an actuary within WorkCover and drew this matter to its attention in 1991. Management was not interested in putting his comment in writing.

By June 1995 he asked that he be requested to comment in writing. In his written statement he said the situation was unsustainable. Even this did not bring results, although he had been making such comments since 1991. In July 1995 he took the matter to the Auditor-General. This issue has been such a problem that it has been referred to in this House as a scandal. It is well known that the WorkCover budget deficit was more than $1 billion in the middle of last year, and, in an attempt to stem the costs, legislation was introduced to change rehabilitation procedures. WorkCover is being managed extremely poorly as an insurance entity.

If there is another attempt to introduce legislation to further curtail the benefits without attempting to get to the root cause it will be interesting to see whether that legislation is passed. Bob Taylor was basically forced to resign under pressure in March 1999. For years he was put under pressure for what was initially an inside story but is now common knowledge. Has he been looked after; has he had a fair deal? Not on your nelly! The system simply said, "This man is making trouble for the department; we will get rid of him," and it succeeded. It should be noted that those who forced Cynthia Kardell out and wasted all that money are still being promoted and moving happily up their career trees.

This bill aims to support whistleblowers in three ways. First, it will obviate the difficulty of proving that the action taken against the whistleblower was a reprisal. In other words, the whistleblower may not be victimised because of his or her honesty in reporting a situation or at least drawing the matter to the attention of someone who might be able to take action. Second, it will require an investigating authority, employer or official who discloses the identity of a whistleblower to bear the onus of proof in justifying the disclosure on public interest grounds.

That means that if somebody within an organisation provides information that will correct the behaviour of the organisation in the public interest, and the person who is given that information discloses the identity of the whistleblower, and the whistleblower is pressured, discriminated against, harassed or otherwise disadvantaged, the investigating authority or employer must bear the onus of proving that it was in the public interest. It cannot merely be in the interests of that group, or a matter of carelessness. Third, the bill will enable a whistleblower to take legal action against a person and/or public authority who has unlawfully disclosed his or her identity.

The original legislation did not provide for protection of the whistleblower. A common fault of
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much of the legislation that passes through this House is that the window-dressing looks great but it has no teeth and cannot be enforced. Since the introduction of the 1994 Act a number of whistleblowers have been ostracised, victimised and eventually driven from their jobs. Whistleblowers want to do the right thing by the taxpayers of New South Wales. Money that could and should be spent on health, education and public transport, our money, is being wasted. Public morality also enters into the equation. We want a government that is moral. We want a government that does the right thing. We want a government that is not venal. We want competent administration. These things are so obvious that they are barely worth mentioning. They are like motherhood: they are good.

The more secretive the Government is, the more it can frighten people into shutting them up, the more it can claim commercial in confidence as a bogus reason, the more it can silence or privatise auditors-general, as happened in Victoria, the less chance we have of knowing where our money goes and the more vested interests will make deals with sections of government or the bureaucracy for their own ends. The taxpayer is seen as the milch cow. For every dollar that is wasted in a bad deal, an incompetently made contract, or an abuse of power by a Minister or other authority that can give contracts that are not in the best interests of the public, the less money there is for education, health, transport and other infrastructure.

Yesterday in this House we witnessed the consequence of the public sector not having enough money: a huge debate as to whether we should or should not give away public land and organisations because the Government cannot afford to run them. If money is badly managed, if it is wasted, the public loses the benefit of that money. If members of this House were asked whether they have any worthwhile projects on which public money could be spent, every one of them would have worthwhile projects that are restricted by the availability of taxpayers money. The bill is an attempt to improve the way in which government works. I could have come into this House with hundreds of examples of whistleblowers who have been grossly disadvantaged, but that is not necessary.

The bill is an attempt to protect whistleblowers as the key element in the process of allowing open government from within the bureaucracy and optimum behaviour within a government instrumentality. It is an important element that was overlooked in the original legislation. Bureaucracy tends to close ranks and protect those in power within the bureaucracy who are protecting themselves rather than the bureaucracy. I suppose they see the two as being the same once they get to a certain level within the bureaucracy. The only way in which bureaucracy can protect itself is to crush people. Sometimes money is not involved.

A whistleblower who attempted to make the State Rail Authority enforce its smoke-free policy was harassed for many years with bogus disciplinary proceedings and trumped up charges that he was eventually persuaded to retire. He was goaded into actions that were drummed up as assaults, although he himself was assaulted on a number of occasions. People who carry forward the lofty ideals of the original legislation need to be protected. The legislation is not working as well as it might because of difficulties encountered by whistleblowers. This bill is consistent with the Protected Disclosures Act 1994, but adds the critical element of protection for whistleblowers. Whistleblowers Inc. was formed to provide mutual support to whistleblowers, and has been extremely helpful in providing my staff with information that has led to the development of the bill, which in turn will improve the current legislation.

I would like to place on record my gratitude to that organisation, and in particular to Philip Arantz, the whistleblower who was active in exposing police deception. I ask honourable members to read the bill. I ask the Government to support it. The Opposition has indicated that it will support the bill, and I am hopeful that the Government will support it in a multipartisan way. The bill is consistent with the best intentions of the Government. I have been critical in this House of some of the Government’s secrecy provisions - the commercial in confidence concept - such as those relating to the Water Board contract, the M2 contract, which was requested this morning, and a number of other aspects.

I am sure the Government would agree that maladministration and the hiding of information within the bureaucracy is not in the best interests of the people of this State. If whistleblowers - the key people in bringing these matters to notice - are not protected they will not come forward. If that were to occur the fine rhetoric and the fine legislation about open government simply becomes a lot of hot air and a dream. New South Wales needs a concerted plan for open government. Whistleblowers are an important element in that strategy. The bill is worthy of support by all members of this House. I commend the bill to the House and ask honourable members for their support.

Debate adjourned on motion by the Hon. I. M. Macdonald.

Pursuant to sessional orders business interrupted.

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The Hon. I. M. MACDONALD: I ask the Minister for Juvenile Justice, Minister Assisting the Premier on Youth, and Minister Assisting the Minister for the Environment: Will she inform the House of employment initiatives being implemented for young people with post-school qualifications who are currently unemployed?

The Hon. CARMEL TEBBUTT: I thank the honourable member for his question related to employment opportunities for young people and what the Government is doing to assist them. The Government is committed to building a competitive economy that attracts jobs and investment for the people of New South Wales. That is particularly important for young people, and the Government is pursuing a range of initiatives to improve the employment prospects for young people.

There is a Jobs Line phone information service and web site for young people called "Applying for NSW Government Jobs". There is a new provision in the State Contract for the Provision of Temporary Staff asking temporary employment agencies to develop recruitment campaigns that target young people. There is no doubt that youth unemployment requires a community approach to improving the prospects for young people in the labour force. The 1997 Youthforce report "Making It Work for Young People" recommended as one of its five key strategies:

Promoting a community approach to improve prospects of young people; through harnessing cooperative efforts between government agencies, encouraging partnerships and mutual responsibilities in the broader community and addressing negative perceptions of young people.

I am pleased to say that I recently hosted the Prospects 99 - Networking to Work initiative, which actually picks up the recommendations of the Youthforce report. Prospects 99 is a networking event for young people with post-school qualifications who are looking for work. This event brings young graduates and business or Government employers together and helps to raise awareness in the business and Government sector about equality and the number of young graduates available for employment.

It is certainly an initiative that targets a particular sector of unemployed youth: young unemployed graduates. Nevertheless, it is an important initiative because addressing the problem of youth unemployment requires a whole series of strategies to target different sectors of the market. The graduates gain contact networks and mentors and build their confidence for jobs searching. The first Prospects 99 event was attended by more than 100 young people and 70 business and Government managers. There was overwhelming demand for this event from young people and over 300 applications were received for 100 places.

All young people who applied have had their names, photos and mini curricula vitae included in a Prospects 99 directory on CD-ROM which has been provided to the 70 business and Government leaders who attended the Prospects 99 event, as well as to an additional 180 business people. The event was based on a successful Western Australia initiative. It is estimated that 80 per cent of the 150 young people who took part found work within six months, either directly or indirectly, through Prospects 99.

This initiative is particularly important when it is considered that labour market experts and placements agencies say that approximately 60 per cent of jobs are never advertised, that they are filled through word-of-mouth or through personal contact. Many young unemployed university and TAFE graduates do not have the same access to networks and mentors as other people do, and events such as Prospects 99 seek to address this issue. The Government is acutely aware that unemployment in rural and regional New South Wales is significantly higher than in the cities. With this in mind, Prospects 99 events will be held in regional centres before the end of this year.

Organisations such as local councils, chambers of commerce, regional economic development boards, higher education institutions, Rotary, Lions and other service clubs will be asked if they are interested in hosting a Prospects 99 event in their area. The Government is working hard to provide young people in New South Wales with the best opportunity of gaining employment. This delivers on the Government’s election commitments and also the New South Wales Government Youth Policy, which highlighted the need for initiatives such as Prospects 99 - Networking to Work.

The Hon. M. J. GALLACHER: I ask the Attorney General a question without notice: Why was a former Labor member of this House, Patricia Staunton, appointed Chief Magistrate of New South Wales when she had only two years experience on the bench? Now that she joins other Labor figures such as Chief Justice Spigelman and Industrial
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Relations Commissioner Peter Sams in the New South Wales judiciary, is membership of the New South Wales Labor Party a criterion for appointment to the judiciary? Will the Attorney inform the House who were the other candidates considered for the position, so that the House and the public may judge for themselves whether this was a political appointment?

The Hon. J. W. SHAW: I am actually very proud of the appointments I have made to the bench over the last four to five years. I regard Magistrate Patricia Staunton’s appointment as entirely meritorious. I am very pleased about it. I think she will bring an energetic managerial and appropriate approach to that leadership role in the Local Court. May I say that I have not the slightest hint of embarrassment or inhibition about that appointment. I think she was a very meritorious candidate.

The Hon. M. J. Gallacher: But who did she beat for the job?

The Hon. J. W. SHAW: The honourable member is pressing me by way of his substantive question and interjection in relation to who else might have been in the field. I do not think it is appropriate for me to disclose the other names that might have been put forward. As has been reported in the press, I can say that Chief Magistrate David Landa recommended Patricia Staunton’s appointment. I can certainly say that. Obviously it is self-evident that there would be other internal candidates from the bench and other people practising law who were considered.

I think it would be entirely invidious of me to say who might have been considered, rejected or accepted. I do not think that is a useful process. I prefer to affirm my absolute confidence in the capacity, integrity and professional ability of Patricia Staunton to lead the Local Court into the new millennium. I think she will be a fine leader of that very important court, which has both a civil and criminal jurisdiction.

The Hon. Dr P. WONG: I ask the Special Minister of State, and Assistant Treasurer: What are the reasons for the intended closure of Seaforth TAFE, as has been announced, early next year? Has there been an inquiry into the higher education and community education needs of the northern beaches region? What are the results of the inquiry? Is he aware that 1,700 students at Seaforth TAFE, including Higher School Certificate students, will be severely disadvantaged by the closure? What will happen to the Seaforth campus after the TAFE is closed? Does this decision reflect this Government’s commitment to public and accessible higher and community education?

The Hon. J. J. DELLA BOSCA: I thank the member for his question. As honourable members will be aware, it touches on a matter that has been debated over the past couple of days in this House. I think it is worth noting that New South Wales spends more on TAFE than any other State. More than one-third of all vocational education and training funding in Australia is spent in New South Wales. The New South Wales Government has increased funding for TAFE by $53 million since 1995, despite Federal Government cuts totalling more than $75 million.

The Hon. M. R. Egan: Can you give us those figures again?

The Hon. J. J. DELLA BOSCA: I would be very happy to. The New South Wales Government has increased funding for TAFE by $53 million since 1995, despite Federal Government cuts totalling $75 million. I might say more about those figures later. The demand for TAFE training continues to grow. Enrolments in TAFE New South Wales have increased from 411,000 in 1995 to more than 445,000 this year, yet Federal funding continues to decline. While the New South Wales training sector is more competitive than ever, TAFE New South Wales is determined to reposition itself to maintain its standing as Australia’s pre-eminent training provider. Increased competition and less Federal Government funding have resulted in budget adjustments which are necessary to improve the cost competitiveness of TAFE New South Wales compared with other States and private training providers.

The Seaforth centre was refurbished 13 years ago but has deteriorated to a stage where an estimated $250,000 will need to be spent on the roof, and students have complained about inadequate parking and canteen facilities. The Northern Sydney Institute has reviewed its educational profile and has decided to relocate courses from its Seaforth campus to nearby campuses. As northern beaches college enrolments have been declining overall, the relocation will approve efficiencies and enable the institute to consolidate its educational programs and maximise the number of student places actively engaged in vocational programs.

These changes will provide better services and facilities for the northern beaches communities. Some examples of improvements include the
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creation of a new engineering skills centre, the establishment of an integrated fine arts facility, improved library facilities, improved services and longer opening hours, the provision of extra car parking spaces for students, increased security, and better computing and equipment systems support.

A steering group has been established to develop the new fine arts centre in consultation with the staff. The institute will focus its fine arts educational programs on areas which lead to employment. Fine arts students who seek to undertake single subjects as enrichment programs will be able to undertake adult community education programs within the local community. The institute’s profile continues to emphasise business studies as an important provision, and as a consequence the Government will relocate business studies students from Seaforth to Brookvale - a fine suburb - as part of its undertaking to improve facilities and student support. I am advised that the institute intends to relocate business studies students 3.8 kilometres away at Brookvale and intends to relocate pre-vocational programs.

[Interruption]

That is a much shorter distance than students from southern Sydney have to travel to Wollongong; and a much shorter distance than the Opposition wants people in southern Sydney to have to travel to get to public education facilities. This relocation will be subject to consultation with staff and students. It will give the students the option of choosing to be relocated to the national arts school or, as members interjecting have forecast, to Meadowbank or Hornsby, whichever suits them best. The Government is giving students choice and options.

I know that some members opposite would be embarrassed at the treatment of tertiary and secondary education dished out by their colleagues. This once proud Liberal Party, which stood for personal advancement in technical and fine arts education, and for social standing, has fallen amongst the Barbarians. Massive cuts have been inflicted on tertiary education throughout the Commonwealth, but particularly targeted to New South Wales because of the Government’s attempts to achieve excellence in that sector. Thanks to the Opposition Whip, the Hon. J. H. Jobling, I did not have the opportunity to reply to the second reading debate. He is educating me, and I am learning everyday.

The Hon. J. H. Jobling: You have a long way to go.

The Hon. J. J. DELLA BOSCA: Yes, I am learning every day. By way of response to the honourable member’s question, everyone of goodwill, including members of this House, would agree about the importance of international competitiveness.

The Hon. D. J. Gay: Are you going anywhere with this?

The Hon. J. J. DELLA BOSCA: I am going a long way with this, because soon there will be a Federal election - Jeff Kennett did not learn the lesson, and nor did John Howard. The Treasurer would agree with me that the Opposition is always talking about things that it should be doing to prepare the Australian economy for the future. There are two things that governments can do about that, and the most important and obvious is education and training. That is the only thing we can really do. And what is the Government doing? We are increasing funding for education.

But what is the Federal Government doing? The Federal Government is slashing funds! The Federal Government’s treatment of the tertiary education sector is a disgrace. Members opposite know that and that is why they are embarrassed and are remaining silent. The Federal Government’s treatment of education is a disgrace, a betrayal of the future of the country. Regrettably, future generations of Australians will have to pay for that neglect unless we all get together to address the issues.

The Hon. R. T. M. BULL: I address my question to the Treasurer. Why has the Treasurer delayed the introduction of Pub Keno, which was part of the TAB prospectus? Is the Treasurer aware that the price of TAB shares fell when the Premier shelved its introduction in early August? Is the Treasurer also aware that the TAB board has certain fiduciary obligations to honour the terms of the prospectus?

The Hon. M. R. EGAN: I take it from the question that the Opposition is committing itself to further gambling outlets in New South Wales. The reason no decision has yet been made on this issue is fairly obvious: the Government is, of course, examining the Productivity Commission’s report and other reports.

The Hon. R. D. DYER: I ask the Attorney General the following question without notice: Will the Attorney inform the House about the steps which have been taken to further the co-operative
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relationship that exists between the Local Court and community justice centres?

The Hon. J. W. SHAW: The honourable member’s question focuses on an important point. Community justice centres [CJCs] play an important role in providing access to the legal system for the people of New South Wales. It is important to have a correct co-operative relationship between the CJCs and the court system. Over the past ten years there has been a significant increase in the number of matters coming before the Local Court involving disputes between citizens.

Mediation is suitable where there is an ongoing relationship between the parties and where there are underlying issues which are not resolved by the court process. A memorandum of understanding at the State level between the director and cost centre managers of the Local Court and the CJCs seeks to ensure greater consistency for both staff and clients, and to ensure accountability and transparency by articulating the functions, roles and responsibilities for each partner to the agreement.

The primary objectives of the memorandum of understanding are to offer clients an enhanced client service by providing information, referrals and timely and efficient access to alternative forms of dispute resolution; to ensure disputes are dealt with in the most appropriate forum to ensure long-term and realistic agreements; to improve court efficiency by diverting matters which are more appropriately dealt with through non-adversarial methods of dispute resolution; to promote community harmony and safety; and to promote the empowerment of individuals and communities. A working party has been set up to look at the implementation issues associated with the memorandum, such as training, data collection and referral procedures. The application of the memorandum will be limited to the areas in which CJC mediations can be offered.

The Hon. Dr A. CHESTERFIELD-EVANS: My question, which is genuinely without notice, is directed to the Special Minister of State, and Assistant Treasurer. Why has the Minister refused to proclaim section 61 (6) of the Motor Accidents Compensation Act, which deals with the right of appeal of accident victims? Why is the Minister trying to usurp the will of Parliament? Does the Minister have no faith in the parliamentary committee that was given the task of reviewing the Motor Accidents Compensation Act?

The Hon. J. J. DELLA BOSCA: I am not sure what the implication is in the honourable member’s preface about a genuine question without notice. The issue the honourable member is referring to relates to a letter and some material sent by the Law Society in respect of the non-commencement of section 61 (6) of the Motor Accidents Compensation Act, which may have been referred to as the Sham-Ho amendment. I might read to the House an excerpt - it is not very long - from the Law Society’s journal Caveat. It is really the text of a letter from the Hon. P. J. Breen, and it makes some of the issues fairly clear. It reads:

The Law Society’s reaction to the new motor accidents legislation, as described in Caveat No. 201, is curious to say the least. To say that the vote of only one crossbencher played a crucial role in the passage of the bill through the Upper House is quite wrong.

For a start, the legislation was supported in principle by Labor and the Coalition, making hard work of any serious lobbying by the Law Society against the Bill. To its credit, from the point of view of the legal profession, the Society lobbied intensely for fundamental changes. The predominant view in the Parliament, however, was that injuries caused by motor vehicle accidents need to be regarded as a medical problem, not a legal one.

Numerous amendments to the Motor Accidents Compensation Bill were debated in the Upper House, including 70 amendments proposed by the Government itself. Many amendments were grouped together for the purposes of the voting. Of the 82 votes taken by the House, 67 were decided on the voices, and 15 divisions occurred. Only one issue was decided by a margin of one-vote - the role of the Motor Accidents Council - which is hardly crucial in the overall scheme of the legislation.

The last time I recall a serious defeat for the Law Society in the Upper House by the vote of only one crossbencher was a vote in November 1995 on legislation to allow licensed conveyancers to undertake commercial work. On that occasion, John Tingle voted with the Government after initially lending his support to the Opposition, facilitating the passage of the legislation by one vote.

I am only speculating, of course, but Mr Tingle may have been influenced to change his conveyancing vote by the lobbying of a disenchanted consumer of legal services. It goes without saying that the Law Society has not cornered the lobbying market.

The Society ought to promote those aspects of the Motor Accidents Compensation Act that favour law consumers and not limit its comments to the likely adverse impact on solicitors’ practices. As personal injuries expert Tom Goudkamp said at a recent seminar sponsored by the Australian Plaintive Lawyers Association, many changes to the way we now deal with motor accidents compensation are very good changes and ought to be welcomed.

That is a very good letter indeed, and that is why I took the liberty of reading it to the House. The correspondence was generated by an article in the Law Society’s journal, Caveat, which is an interesting name for such a journal. Basically it deals with a series of aspects which could suborn at
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least some of the clear intention of the Government and honourable members. As I have said to honourable members on a number of occasions, they were voting on legislation which was substantially the work of this House. I might belabour the patience of the House by reading a letter I wrote to the Hon. Helen Sham-Ho. I said:

Dear Mrs Sham-Ho

I am writing to you concerning the commencement of the Motor Accidents Compensation Act 1999, in particular the amendment which you sponsored to permit a court to substitute an assessment of impairment when the court has determined that the original assessment should be set aside on grounds of procedural unfairness.

I believe you made it very clear when moving the amendment that the ability of the court to substitute its own determination only arises where the court has set aside the assessment on grounds of procedural unfairness. However, the legal profession is advancing a different interpretation to the section. I am forwarding a copy of the recent edition of "Caveat", produced by the Law Society of New South Wales, which claims that this amendment was sponsored by the Law Society’s intervention, and which provides a different view. I have highlighted in the text the suggestion that the section gives an unfettered right to reject a medical certificate and substitute the court’s own assessment.

Even members opposite would agree that is suborning the original and absolute intention of the bill and the intention of this House. My letter continued:

While it is perhaps not surprising, it is disappointing that the immediate reaction of the Law Society to these reforms is to seek ways of avoiding the new arrangements, and thereby continues to promote a litigious solution to claims. You will appreciate that I am concerned not to allow this to occur and accordingly I am proposing not to commence section 61(6) with the other provisions. Instead, I will bring forward an amendment to the section to make it absolutely clear that the right of the court to make substituted assessment is limited to circumstances where the original assessment is set aside on grounds of procedural unfairness.

That letter was sent to the Hon. Helen Sham-Ho recently. The proclamation to commence the Motor Accidents Compensation Act was published in the Government Gazette on Friday 10 September. The proclamation provides that the substantive provisions of the Act commence on Tuesday 5 October, except for section 61 (6). I have received from Mr Mark Richardson, the Chief Executive Officer of the Law Society, a letter expressing the concern about the non-commencement of the section. This is surprising, given that officers of the Motor Accidents Authority advised the Law Society that this section would not be commenced.

The Law Society was also advised that the decision not to commence section 61 (6) was in response to suggestions from the Law Society and a number of individual lawyers that the section would operate in a way which was clearly not intended by Parliament. Section 61 (6) was an amendment to the Act sponsored by the Hon. Helen Sham-Ho, as I previously stated, and supported by the Government.

Section 61 concerns the standards of a medical assessment of impairment. Its effect is to permit a court to substitute an assessment of impairment when the court has determined that the original assessment should be set aside on grounds of procedural unfairness. As I have indicated, the subsection was not commenced because the legal profession, including the Law Society in its publication Caveat, has suggested an interpretation of the section that is completely contrary to that which was clearly intended by Parliament.

The Hon. Helen Sham-Ho made it quite clear when moving the amendment that the ability of the court to substitute its own determination would arise only when the court has set aside an assessment. The grounds upon which an assessment may be set aside are set out in section 61 (4). They are: there was a denial of procedural fairness to a party and the court is satisfied that accepting the certificate would cause substantial injustice to a party to the proceedings.

In publications and discussions concerning the new scheme, including a public forum, a number of lawyers have taken a different view of the section. As an example, I refer honourable members to the 21 July edition of Caveat. Honourable members will be interested in its interpretation of the parliamentary debate on the Motor Accidents Compensation Act. I have already read the Hon. P. J. Breen’s letter to Caveat.

In relation to section 61 (6), the Hon. Helen Sham-Ho may be interested to know that the Law Society is claiming that she sponsored the amendment at the Law Society’s initiative. I can inform the House that the Hon. Helen Sham-Ho personally raised this issue with me and settled the amendment with my officers without any Law Society involvement. The Law Society claimed in the Caveat article, in paragraph 7 on page 2, that the section gives the court an unfettered right to have a medical assessment of impairment set aside.

The Hon. J. F. Ryan: Point of order: This is the last question time before the House takes a substantial break. The Minister is giving a very detailed answer which would more appropriately be given as a ministerial statement, and I am sure the House would want to debate it. The Minister is
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reflecting on a vote of the House. I ask you to direct him to draw his answer to a conclusion so that the Opposition has the opportunity to ask another question.

The Hon. J. J. DELLA BOSCA: I ask leave of the House to incorporate the balance of my remarks in Hansard.

The Hon. D. J. Gay: To the point of order: Madam President, I draw your attention to Standing Order 81 and Standing Order 85. Standing Order 81 states:

No Member shall digress from the subject matter of any Question under discussion; and all imputations of improper motives, and all personal reflections on Members shall be deemed disorderly.

First, the Minister digressed from the question that was asked and, second, he made an unwarranted use of a letter to attack the Hon. J. S. Tingle.

The Hon. J. J. DELLA BOSCA: To the point of order: I made it clear during my answer that I was quoting from a public letter written by the Hon. P. J. Breen. I am sure that the Hon. J. S. Tingle did not take offence to my use of that letter. I have already said that I have a few more points to make. I am happy to resume my seat, but I have other documentation which I am happy to make available to the Opposition. However, members of the Opposition do not appear to want to see that documentation. Madam President, I am in your hands.

The Hon. J. R. Johnson: To the point of order: The first standing order referred to by the Hon. D. J. Gay relates to a question before the House and not to question time. There is a further point. The Minister sought leave to incorporate the balance of his answer in Hansard and that matter has not as yet been resolved.

The Hon. J. F. Ryan: Further to the point of order: Standing Order 78 states:

No Member shall reflect upon any vote of the House, except for the purpose of moving that such vote be rescinded.

This entire question is a reflection on the vote of the House.

The PRESIDENT: Order! The point of order has three elements: the length of the answer, digression from the original question and imputations against members. The point dealing with the length of the answer is simply vexatious. I was reminded of the days of Virginia Chadwick as I listened to the Minister’s answer. Second, the Minister did not digress from the original question. As to imputation against members, the Minister was reading from a letter that has been made public. There is no point of order. However, I ask the Minister to finish his answer or seek leave to incorporate the material.

The Hon. J. F. Ryan: Point of order: Madam President, there is a matter on which you have not ruled. Standing Order 78 states that it is disorderly for a member to reflect on a vote of the House. The Minister is discussing an amendment that was moved and voted upon by this House and he is not moving to rescind it. In fact, he is describing other actions that the Government has taken in regard to that matter. Clearly, the Minister’s answer is out of order.

The Hon. M. R. Egan: To the point of order: It is my understanding that the Minister was explaining why a piece of legislation that went through this Parliament has not been proclaimed. That is quite different from reflecting on a vote of the House. I would have thought that that would have been the sort of explanation that the House would want to receive.

The Hon. J. F. Ryan: Further to the point of order: The Minister was trying to explain what the House meant by passing a particular vote. That was clearly part of his answer.

The Hon. J. J. DELLA BOSCA: To the point of order: I was correcting the public record in respect of imputations made and the basis on which a member moved an amendment. I was defending the deliberations of this House.

The PRESIDENT: Order! There is no point of order. The Minister was not reflecting on a vote of the House. I accept his explanation that he was explaining why the legislation has not been assented to. Again, I ask the Minister to be brief.

The Hon. J. J. DELLA BOSCA: I will be brief. The thrust of this issue is - and this is not a reflection on the vote of the House - that, in circumstances where there is a conflicting interpretation of a section, as something external to this House, it is a responsible action not to commence that section. As I have already indicated, I have written to the Hon. Helen Sham-Ho in those terms and I have suggested that this matter should be remedied by the Parliament. I will include an amendment to bring this section into line with the intention of the House. That will ensure that the will of the Parliament is fairly reflected in the legislation and that it is not subverted by contrary interpretations.

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The Hon. C. J. S. LYNN: My question without notice is directed to the Treasurer, and Leader of the Government. Is the Treasurer aware that the premises at 135 Cornelia Road, Toongabbie, identified as the Australian Labor Party campaign address for the Blacktown local government election, is the subject of a controversial medium-density housing development application currently before that council?

Given that the ALP campaign director for that election, Mr Rebel Hanlon, does not reside at that address and does not own the land, will the Minister inform the House of any relationship between the Labor Party and the owners of 135 Cornelia Road, Toongabbie? Did the owners of that property give appropriate permission for the ALP to use that address for the purposes of the local government election campaign? Does the Minister agree that these matters should be part of an expanded inquiry into the Blacktown City Council elections by the State Electoral Office?

The Hon. M. R. EGAN: The answer to the first part of the honourable member’s question is no. The answer to the second part of his question is no. I think there were a number of other parts to his question, which I would not be in a position to answer anyway. So I will be quite happy to refer them to whoever the Hon. C. J. S. Lynn wants me to refer them to.

The Hon. I. COHEN: I ask the Minister for Juvenile Justice, Minister Assisting the Premier on Youth, and Minister Assisting the Minister for the Environment: How many native birds have been killed as a result of poison bait being used to control the spread of the Newcastle virus? Were any threatened species killed as a result of this baiting program? If so, how many?

The Hon. CARMEL TEBBUTT: I am unable to respond to the question asked by the Hon. I. Cohen, but I will refer it to the Minister for the Environment in the other place, and obtain an answer for the honourable member.

The Hon. D. J. GAY: My question without notice is directed to the Special Minister of State, representing the Minister for Urban Affairs and Planning. Is the Minister aware that the Sydney Turf Club [STC] is beginning its night racing program at the Canterbury Park Racecourse this evening? Was the STC originally granted approval to erect 40 light towers at the track for the purposes of night racing? Did that number increase to 46 light towers, with approval from Canterbury City Council, but with no notification to nearby residents?

Given that approval was granted for 46 light towers, why are 47 light towers now in place at Canterbury racetrack? Is the Minister aware that the maximum number of lights approved for each tower was 18? Is it not a fact that five of those towers now carry 25 lights each, meaning that residents are facing the glare of an extra 50 lights? What will the Minister do about it?

The Hon. M. R. EGAN: I will answer the honourable member’s question as tonight I am going to open Sydney’s first night-racing event at Canterbury. In fact, if the Hon. D. J. Gay would like to come I will give him a lift. The Deputy Leader of the Opposition is going. In honour of the occasion he is even wearing a special night-racing tie. I am sure that he will be able to get a tie for the Hon. D. J. Gay.

The Hon. R. T. M. Bull: It will be a wonderful night.

The Hon. M. R. EGAN: As the Deputy Leader of the Opposition pointed out, it will be a wonderful night. I am proud to be going to Canterbury Park Racecourse tonight to open this State’s first night-racing event. The STC is the racing club that was formed by Billy McKell, when he was Premier of New South Wales, for the ordinary people of New South Wales.

The Hon. I. M. Macdonald: What’s your tip?

The Hon. M. R. EGAN: I have not looked at the form yet.

The Hon. R. T. M. Bull: There’s plenty of time to do that.

The Hon. M. R. EGAN: In fact, I do not look at the form. I have a sure-fire system. You have to determine whether you are using the Sydney Morning Herald or the Daily Telegraph price list. You put $10 each way on every clear third favourite in the betting market. If a horse is a clear third favourite, put $10 each way. If it shares third favouritism with one or more horses, do not back anything in that race. Over 40 years you will come out a winner! I am looking forward to tonight. I hope there are some clear third favourites! I have been to Canterbury before for night racing. A trial
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was held a month ago as a night for the local residents. All the local residents were invited and a couple of thousand turned up.

Even though it was very cold and my overcoat really was not warding off the cold, I made the point of spending about three hours going round and talking to the local residents, and asking them where they lived. They proudly told me. I asked them whether they supported or opposed the introduction of night racing at Canterbury and they all supported it. They all thought it was a great idea. They all thought it was a fabulous idea. If there is anything else remaining in the honourable member’s stupid question, I will refer it to whomever he wants me to refer it. I repeat my invitation to him: join me and his parliamentary leader, the Hon. R. T. M. Bull, and come to Canterbury Park, have a great night, meet the residents and see their overwhelming support for the introduction of night racing.

The Hon. D. J. GAY: I ask a supplementary question. My question was to the Special Minister of State, representing the Minister for Urban Affairs and Planning. I would like this question to be referred to those Ministers. I would like the Minister to answer a genuine question: Does he believe that the planning laws of this State are being breached? Does he want to filibuster his way out of every situation?

The Hon. M. R. EGAN: As I have indicated, I will refer whatever part of his question that I had not answered to whomever he wants me to refer it. I just make this point: the Hon. D. J. Gay sits over there because he could only get one vote apart from his own in the National Party. The only person who voted for him was the Hon. R. T. M. Bull. He is just upset about that. I believe that if the Hon. D. F. Moppett forces a vote now, he might win 3 to 1! Good luck.

The Hon. JAN BURNSWOODS: My question is addressed to the Attorney General, and Minister for Industrial Relations. Will the Minister inform the House how the Government is promoting best employment practice amongst Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders in New South Wales?

The Hon. J. W. SHAW: Industrial relations legislation in New South Wales provides a framework to encourage innovative policies in the workplace. I am pleased to announce that the department has developed a range of specific industrial relations services sought by Aboriginal people and Torres Strait Islanders throughout New South Wales. Those services are provided by a specialist group within the department entitled the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Workplace Services Unit.

As a result, Aboriginal people in this State now have better access to information about their employment rights and responsibilities. The unit is the first of its kind in New South Wales. Staff from the unit work closely with organisations and government agencies already involved with New South Wales Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities to improve employment conditions. A specialist telephone hotline for Aboriginal people, the ATSI Employment Advisory Service, has been set up to give advice on New South Wales employment laws. Callers pay only the cost of a local telephone call, irrespective of their location.

Another service provided by the unit is the ATSI Employment Information Kit. The kit assists organisations to develop lawful, productive and innovative working relationships. The kit is targeted towards organisations employing ATSI workers or delivering services to ATSI communities. It is currently being piloted with a number of Aboriginal organisations throughout New South Wales. Over the next year the unit will conduct workshops throughout New South Wales for Aboriginal people in conjunction with community organisations and government agencies. Those workshops will cover employment issues, New South Wales employment laws, minimum employment standards and good employment practices. The Government strongly encourages Aboriginal employers and employees to contact the unit and take advantage of the range of services it provides.

The Hon. A. G. CORBETT: My question is to the Treasurer, Minister for State Development, and Vice-President of the Executive Council. Over recent months it has been brought to my attention that women who breastfeed in public, both indoors and outdoors, are still being ridiculed for attending to their child’s natural and urgent need for nourishment and emotional and physical closeness. As Leader of the Government in this House will the Minister give women who wish to take part in community life and breastfeed at the same time an unequivocal assurance that the Labor Government supports, and indeed encourages, breastfeeding of infants anywhere and at any time?

The Hon. Elaine Nile: Come on, Michael!

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The Hon. M. R. EGAN: The Hon. Elaine Nile thinks I am going to agree - I am afraid I am not. In almost every respect I am an old-fashioned person, and I know a lot of old-fashioned people do not like women breastfeeding in public, but I do not know why. I do not believe we should be making it hard for mothers; we should be making it easier for them. It seems to me that the breastfeeding of an infant is an entirely natural thing. I certainly do not find it distasteful, as Jeff Kennett in Victoria apparently does. He was reported as saying he found it distasteful. Actually, I think it is quite a beautiful thing for a mother to feed her child. However, attitudes and values change and the fact that there are a number of people in our community for whom breastfeeding in public is a relatively new experience -

The Hon. A. G. Corbett: Surely that’s their problem.

The Hon. M. R. EGAN: It might be their problem, but let us be a bit tolerant and allow people who do not like it to at least express that opinion. I agree that mothers certainly should not be ridiculed for doing it and they certainly should not have people making it difficult for them to breastfeed their children in public or in private.

Reverend the Hon. F. J. Nile: What about in the Chamber?

The Hon. M. R. EGAN: If a member of this House had a child, if the child needed feeding, and if the mother’s attendance was required in the House, of course the mother should be able to feed her child.

The Hon. Dr A. Chesterfield-Evans: What about the fathers?

The Hon. R. S. L. Jones: They can’t breastfeed.

The Hon. M. R. EGAN: At least the Hon. R. S. L. Jones understands that point. The Democrats do not. The Democrats do not understand that a father cannot breastfeed, and the Hon. Dr A. Chesterfield-Evans is a doctor. Heaven help us! What sort of people do we elect to this Parliament - doctors and members of Parliament who believe that fathers can breastfeed!

The Hon. PATRICIA FORSYTHE: My question without notice is to the Special Minister of State, representing the Minister for Education and Training. Is it a fact that Yanco Agricultural High School has a capacity of 350 students? Does the web site of the Department of Education and Training show the current enrolment at 325 students, yet the actual enrolment is only 249 students? What action is the Government taking to ensure the viability of this important rural high school?

The Hon. J. J. DELLA BOSCA: No doubt the Hon. D. J. Gay and the Hon. J. F. Ryan will be pleased to know I do not have an answer to this question. It sounds a very important question, so I will undertake to get an answer for the honourable member as soon as my colleague can supply one.

The Hon. H. S. TSANG: Will the Attorney General further clarify an answer to an earlier question by the Leader of the Opposition? Does holding a political affiliation exclude one from appointment to the judicial bench? Will the Attorney General ask the Leader of the Opposition if the following outstanding, distinguished judges are members of the Country Labor Party: Justice David Patten, Justice John Dowd, Justice Vince Bruce and Justice Barry O’Keefe?

The Hon. J. W. SHAW: I take appointments to the Supreme Court, District Court or Local Court bench seriously. I tend to agonise over such appointments. I certainly give them conscientious attention. As I reflect on the appointments this Government and I, as Attorney General, have made in the past four or five years I am pleased at the calibre, diversity and quality of the appointees. With an expression of some personal bias, might I say that because a person has engaged in public office or public life and because that person has expressed a political commitment to one or another party does not disqualify that person from public office. In many ways the engagement in public life, or even the engagement as a member of this Parliament, might be considered as a positive attribute for a prospective or actual appointment to the bench of New South Wales.

I am not embarrassed about appointing people who have been engaged in public debate and public office to a judicial office because I know when they take that judicial oath of office, when they commit themselves to do right by all people in the State objectively, the oath is adhered to. I have absolute confidence that, whether people have emerged from an entirely apolitical background or a background of activism in the Labor, Liberal or any other party, when they take a position on the bench they exercise their office with objectivity and, to use a word that is often misunderstood, disinterestedness.

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The Hon. M. I. JONES: My question is to the Minister Assisting the Minister for the Environment, representing the Minister for the Environment. I refer the Minister to his statement to the Legislative Assembly on Thursday 9 September in relation to the Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park draft plan of management. Will he clarify what he meant by "minimum impact horse riding practices" and how they will be "promoted"?

The Hon. CARMEL TEBBUTT: I thank the Hon. M. I. Jones for his question. I will refer it to the Minister.

The Hon. D. T. HARWIN: My question is to the Minister for Juvenile Justice, representing the Minister for Western Sydney, who has responsibility for Sydney Water. Will the Minister explain why fees paid to the directors of Sydney Water increased from $713,000 to $930,000 last year at a time when the people of Sydney were unable to drink tap water due to contamination?

The Hon. CARMEL TEBBUTT: I am unable to respond to the question asked by the honourable member. I undertake to get a response as soon as possible.

The Hon. J. HATZISTERGOS: My question without notice is to the Treasurer, and Minister for State Development. Will the Treasurer inform the House of the Government’s recent efforts to develop a carbon credits trading market in Sydney?

The Hon. M. R. EGAN: The Government’s plans to develop a carbon credits trading market in Sydney were announced recently by the Minister for Energy, the Hon. Kim Yeadon.

The Hon. D. J. Gay: You have already done this.

The Hon. M. R. EGAN: No. If I were the honourable member I would sit in silence. He has not done too well today.

The Hon. D. J. Gay: I have done very well.

The Hon. M. R. EGAN: He should sit in silence. He is creating embarrassment for his colleagues. The market is scheduled to open in mid-2000. Our long-term aim is to establish Sydney as the Asia-Pacific’s leading carbon credits trading centre. The Carbon Trading Implementation Group, comprising the Sydney Futures Exchange, State Forests of New South Wales, New South Wales Treasury and the Cabinet Office will work to establish a transparent and verifiable carbon standard, and develop the actual trading system. Trading would establish a market price for carbon, and draw the attention of the investment community to the potential returns for investing in renewable energy and forests.

A recent study by the Sustainable Energy Development Authority, an initiative of this Government, revealed that renewable energy is one of the fastest growing sectors of the economy. According to the study, demand for energy efficiency, and renewable energy products and services is growing at a rate of more than 25 per cent a year. Admittedly it is from a low base, but it has a very high growth rate. That is more than the growth rate of information technology and tourism combined.

The Government’s objective has been to create an environment in which investments in renewable energy, emissions reductions and carbon sequestration make good commercial sense. Recently the Tokyo Electric Power Company signed a letter of intent with State Forests to establish up to 40,000 hectares of forest in the coming decade, a deal potentially worth up to $120 million. All Australian governments have a responsibility to the community to deliver real reductions in emissions. New South Wales has led the way consistently in tackling the greenhouse issues. We have developed the Greenpower scheme to encourage people to use electricity generated from renewable energy sources. I would hope that every member has signed up in part or full as a Greenpower purchaser.

[Interruption]

They all have a responsibility to the taxpayer, but the Hon. Dr B. P. V. Pezzutti should be able to put his money where his mouth is, as I have. I can tell by the silence of some members opposite that they have not.

The Hon. Dr B. P. V. Pezzutti: Where’s your solar hot water?

The Hon. M. R. EGAN: I live in a block of home units that has a gas hot water service.

The Hon. Dr B. P. V. Pezzutti: Why don’t they get a solar?

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The Hon. M. R. EGAN: That is a good suggestion, but they probably would not because the residents where I live probably vote Liberal. New South Wales was also the first to put greenhouse benchmarks in place for electricity retailers. Through initiatives like the carbon credits trading market the New South Wales Government will continue to promote the advantages of renewable energy. All my life, except for the six years when I was the local member, I have lived in a Liberal electorate.

The Hon. R. S. L. JONES: I ask the Special Minister of State, representing the Minister for Urban Affairs and Planning, a question without notice. Was the development application by the Sydney Turf Club for night racing at Canterbury Park racecourse approved on the basis of a maximum patronage of 7,000? Does item 6 of the council officers’ report of 18 December 1997 note that this admission by the Sydney Turf Club was based on a maximum of 7,000 persons attending? Why then does the Sydney Turf Club’s night racing ticket nomination form state that the total attendance of tonight’s first night race meeting has been limited to 12,000 people? Do the planning laws mean anything in this State?

The Hon. J. J. DELLA BOSCA: I am traumatised by the reaction to my previous answer, so I will just say that I will obtain a detailed answer to the question and obtain a reply as soon as practicable.

The Hon. J. F. RYAN: My question is to the Treasurer, representing the Premier, who administers the State Owned Corporations Act. Is it a fact that the only use the State Government has made of its powers under section 20P of the State Owned Corporations Act is to give instructions to Sydney Water Corporation to extend leases on three private golf clubs in the eastern suburbs, without allowing an open tender? What potential revenue will the corporation forsake as a result of this instruction? What was the benefit to the public interest of not allowing an open tender for these valuable and expensive properties? Is it appropriate for Sydney Water customers to subsidise private golf clubs? Will the Treasurer reimburse Sydney Water Corporation for the net cost of complying with the Government’s instructions, being the revenue it has forgone?

The Hon. M. R. EGAN: I support the Eastlakes and Bonnie Doon golf clubs continuing to have a lease over their existing golf club properties. I am surprised that the Opposition has a contrary view. I will certainly let those clubs and their members know of the Opposition’s view.

The Hon. J. F. Ryan: Apparently there is no need for an open tender.

The Hon. M. R. EGAN: That is right. The Hon. J. F. Ryan’s proposition would open up almost every golf club and bowling club in New South Wales to some sort of commercial business market. In other words, if a golf club or bowling club in the country or the city has a 40- or 50-year lease which is about to expire, that club would have to enter an option with the highest commercial bidder. If that is the sort of community the honourable member wants, it explains why he is still in opposition. Not only will I let Bonnie Doon and Eastlakes members know of the Opposition’s policy, I will tell the members of every bowling and golf club in New South Wales that is on leased Crown land, leased government land or leased local government land. They will all know it within a week.

The Hon. J. F. Ryan has had a bad day. Hardly one question has been asked by the Opposition that it wished it had not asked within a minute of asking it. The honourable member should think first before he opens his silly mouth. The Opposition would do well to have a question time committee, so that some wiser person can say, "Hang on, Johnny. We can’t have another sudden rush of blood to the head."

The Hon. Dr B. P. V. Pezzutti: Point of order: The Hon. J. F. Ryan clearly asked how much the taxpayers had forgone in giving certain concessions. That is clearly a matter of public interest. The Minister has not in any way attempted to answer the question; he has simply heaped abuse on the Hon. J. F. Ryan. That is tragic, in this last question time before a break. I ask you, Madam President, to direct the Minister to answer the question in the interests of the people of New South Wales. It is a disgrace.

The PRESIDENT: Order! There is no point of order. President Willis frequently ruled that it is traditional for Ministers to reply in the manner they think fit.

The Hon. M. R. EGAN: If honourable members have any further silly questions to ask they might like to think again, but if they have some intelligent questions to ask, they should place them on notice.

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The Hon. J. W. SHAW: Yesterday I undertook to provide Reverend the Hon. F. J. Nile with further information about what steps the State Rail Authority proposes to take in relation to the foreshadowed industrial action by members of the Australian Services Union on Friday this week. Unfortunately, at this stage only limited information is available. However, I am informed that the public transport agencies will release an action plan for operations later today and I will inform this House of further details when they become available.

The Hon. CARMEL TEBBUTT: Earlier in question time I was asked a question by the Hon. M. I. Jones about the Ku-ring-gai Chase draft plan of management and comments made by the Minister for the Environment. As the House would be aware, this is a draft plan of management and extensive public comment has been forthcoming. While the Minister for the Environment does not want to pre-empt the outcome of the process, he has acknowledged the concerns of horse riders about particular aspects of the draft plan. He has indicated that he has no intention of either introducing horse bumbags and rubber shoes or banning horse riding per se from the park.

The Hon. J. J. DELLA BOSCA: On 15 September Reverend the Hon. F. J. Nile asked me a question about a proposal to build a McDonald’s restaurant in Moore Park. The Deputy Premier, and Minister for Urban Affairs and Planning has provided the following answer:

On 20 January 1995 the Centennial Park and Moore Park Trust entered into a deed to license a new tennis centre and restaurant in Moore Park with Gameplan Sports and Leisure Pty Ltd and Newks Marketing. On 6 March 1995 Mr Chris Hartcher, then Minister for the Environment and the Minister responsible for the Centennial Park and Moore Park Trust, approved these deeds.

On 26 June 1995 Gameplan Sports and Leisure submitted a development application to South Sydney Council for "the construction of a new tennis centre within an existing tennis court, the construction of a restaurant, the upgrading of two existing tennis courts, the demolition of an existing toilet block and parking for 80 cars." South Sydney Council approved the new tennis centre, but refused the proposed restaurant. It argued that the proposed McDonald’s was a prohibited use under the City of Sydney Planning Scheme Ordinance.

Gameplan Sports and Leisure lodged an appeal with the Land and Environment Court, which subsequently upheld council’s decision.

Gameplan Sports and Leisure then lodged an appeal with the New South Wales Court of Appeal. On 2 July 1999 the New South Wales Court of Appeal ruled that the McDonald’s proposal in Moore Park is permissible.

South Sydney Council has re-exhibited the proposal. The South Sydney Heritage Society, the Olympic Co-ordination Authority and Fox Studios have all provided South Sydney Council with submissions objecting to the proposal. South Sydney Council is currently preparing a set of conditions for the Land and Environment Court in response to a class 1 appeal lodged with the court.

As the Minister is not responsible for the Centennial Park and Moore Park Trust he is not in a position to advise whether or not the Commonwealth Government has approved a $10 million Federation grant to the Centennial Park and Moore Park Trust to help implement its Grand Drive plan, nor is he in a position to comment about the possibility of moving McDonald’s to a different location. Moore Park is under the control and management of the Centennial Park and Moore Park Trust, which reports to the Premier.

Questions without notice concluded.

[The President left the chair at 1.07 p.m. The House resumed at 2.30 p.m.]

Debate resumed from 15 September.

The Hon. R. T. M. BULL (Deputy Leader of the Opposition) [2.30 p.m.]: This bill is extremely timely because gambling has certainly become the preoccupation of the Australian public. It is an issue that is of major and widespread concern to the community. Many people wonder where it is all leading and where it will all end. I congratulate Reverend the Hon. F. J. Nile on introducing the bill even though, for a variety of reasons, I will not support it.

It is good to have debate of this type because it brings this issue into focus and gives honourable members an opportunity to highlight many of the issues. The level of gambling is a matter of concern to many, especially the level of gambling that is occurring in New South Wales. The Opposition and I, as shadow minister for gaming and racing, welcome the debate. I hope that it will be a productive debate and that at the end of the day some of the issues with respect to the level of gambling in this State and associated issues will be examined for the people of New South Wales.

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As all honourable members would know, there has been a rapid expansion of gambling activity over the last 4½ years, especially because of the introduction into hotels of poker machines, beginning with the opening of the casino approximately 3½ years ago. There has also been an expansion - although not a great expansion - of the registered club movement in this State, particularly among some of the larger clubs. That has led to an increase in poker machines from 62,000 to 97,000 over a very short period.

My major concern is that while that rapid growth in gambling and gambling opportunities has occurred, there has not been a commensurate financial undertaking from the government to keep abreast of the problems associated with a high level of gambling. It has become widely known that gambling in New South Wales is very much supply driven rather than demand driven. In other words, poker machines can be found on practically every street corner. Poker machines are available wherever people turn and are very much in the face of the New South Wales population rather than having to be sought. The extraordinary supply of gaming machines in New South Wales has led to a huge increase in player activity and problems associated with a high level of gambling activity. The problem has certainly been spelled out by the number of people who suffer from problem gambling.

One of the main reasons that the Opposition will not support the bill is that on this very day the Parliament has before it the Government’s Gambling Legislation Amendment (Responsible Gambling) Bill. In many ways that bill resolves many of the issues that Reverend the Hon. F. J. Nile is attempting to address by introducing his legislation. However, the Government’s bill probably does not address the issues to the same extent as does Reverend the Hon. F. J. Nile’s bill.

I have certainly been critical of the Government’s legislation because I believe it does not go far enough. When Parliament resumes in a few weeks time, I know that honourable members will have something to say about that. The Government’s legislation is quite clearly a clayton’s attempt to deal with problem gambling rather than a serious attempt to get on top of the issue. The measures adopted by the Government to address these problems, which will probably be contained in the regulations because the legislation is very much embryonic, will cover a number of the concerns sought to be addressed by Reverend the Hon. F. J. Nile’s legislation.

Clause 6 of the bill seeks to prohibit the display of gambling advertisements that can be seen or heard from a public place, the broadcasting or transmission of gambling advertisements and the distribution of objects that constitute or contain gambling advertisements, except in certain circumstances. The Opposition believes that the clause probably goes too far at this stage and prefers instead the Government’s approach of heavily regulating advertisements by people who provide the advertising, adopting a responsible attitude not to mislead the public in relation to the relative merits of gambling.

Clause 7 requires the odds of winning to be displayed if a gambling advertisement is displayed at a gambling facility or at a place where gambling facilities are available. This provision, too, is quite well covered in the Government’s legislation. The extent to which the Government’s bill covers the situation will depend on the content of the regulations. Clauses 8 and 9 prohibit the giving of benefits under sponsorships and the giving of free samples. Those provisions are covered in the Government’s draft legislation, which has been provided to honourable members and which will become a bill at a later stage. While the Government’s legislation does not prohibit a person from promoting gambling in return for a sponsorship, clause 10 of this bill does. I expect, however, that a similar provision will be contained in regulations if not in the Government’s legislation.

Clause 11 allows the Minister to grant exemptions from the provisions created by clauses 6 and 10 but I do not believe that is appropriate. When these measures are set in place the Minister should not grant exemptions, especially in relation to misleading advertising. Honourable members should settle on a responsible provision for gambling advertising and gambling promotion without the Minister having a discretion to grant exemptions.

Clause 13 provides for the removal of advertisements promoting gambling if they are displayed illegally. I believe that this matter is covered by the Government’s draft regulations. Part 3, which relates to family impact assessments, is a useful part of this bill. Today I gave notice of an intention to create an independent gaming authority. If such an authority were established, it could facilitate the provision of family impact assessments and, more importantly, examine social and economic consequences of decisions that will result from the expansion of gambling. The authority will also be able to examine the impacts of those decisions on families.

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Therefore, the provisions contained in part 3 would be covered, not so much by the current legislation, but by creation of that authority. Such an authority would be totally objective in its assessment of issues and would take the politicians out of the process. I believe that would be a plus. In the future when an objective evaluation of gambling decisions needs to be made and the politicians are taken out of the process, we will go a long way towards achieving the goal of objectivity.

I will now address some of the draft regulations, because I know that basically they are the issues which concern Reverend the Hon. F. J. Nile and many people in the community. It is important that cash dispensing facilities be removed from gaming floors of clubs and hotels. It was part of the Opposition’s policy to make sure that they were removed from gaming areas; in the casino they are well away from gaming areas. But that has not been the case in clubs and hotels. During the election campaign I visited a club south of Sydney which had an automatic teller machine [ATM] in the middle of a bank of poker machines; the player adjacent to the ATM would not have had to leave his seat to access it.

One has only to keep one’s eyes open in clubs to see evidence of poor administration. The cashing of cheques in clubs and hotels would be prohibited in a number of circumstances. Under the provisions of the bill introduced by Reverend the Hon. F. J. Nile certain types of advertising in hotels would become offences. Advertising that encourages a breach of the law; depicts children; is false, misleading or deceptive; depicts a person winning from playing a gaming machine; or depicts a gaming machine producing a winning result would become offences.

Other forms of advertising that would become offences include advertising that suggests that financial or other personal success will be achieved from participation in gambling or that skill can influence the outcome of a game that is purely a game of chance; depicts the consumption of alcohol while engaging in gambling activities; is directed at disadvantaged persons; is not conducted in accordance with decency, dignity and good taste and in accordance with advertising codes of practice; and, in the case of electronic advertising, is broadcast between the hours of 5.00 a.m. and 9.00 a.m. or between the hours of 3.00 p.m. and 8.30 p.m. on any day.

Amongst that summary there are many opportunities for the Government to come up with strong regulations of gambling advertising, provided that the finally drafted regulations encompass all those offences, and probably more. Counselling service signage will need to be displayed so that people can readily access it, and information for players about the odds of winning should be displayed. Clocks should be prominently displayed. When I was in Victoria I was told that some hotels have removed clocks and windows. Therefore, people do not know what time of the day it is.

Reverend the Hon. F. J. Nile: It is like that at the casino.

The Hon. R. T. M. BULL: Yes. It is highly desirable that gambling premises have clocks and open windows so that people know how long they have been there. A self-exclusion scheme, such as that provided in the casino, is a positive move. The exposure draft contains the heading, "Other proposals for consideration - Comments welcome", and it is under that heading that members of Parliament have an opportunity for input into the draft regulations. Under the subheading "Inducements" the document states:

Consideration is being made to the introduction of an offence for people who operate gambling facilities, to offer or supply any free or subsidised goods or services which constitute a reward for participation in gambling activities.

That is a positive step but it needs to be fully embellished. Under the subheading "Player activity statements" the document states:

Consideration is being given to the introduction of a requirement for all venues operating player reward schemes, or other schemes in which gaming machine play is recorded, to issue player activity statements - akin to an account statement -

A statement similar to an ATM statement could be issued. Despite its shortcomings in a number of areas, such as not having an independent gaming authority and not addressing the Community Benefit Fund, the proposed legislation provides for responsible advertising, the responsible provision of gaming, and it has the potential to cover the issues that Reverend the Hon. F. J. Nile has covered. Honourable members should follow up the draft regulations in a few weeks when the bill is dealt with, but beyond that we all need to be on the lookout to ensure that the regulations more strictly control the provision of gaming, gambling advertising, and so on, than is currently the case.

The Opposition will not support the bill but acknowledges the very good work done by Reverend the Hon. F. J. Nile. In many instances he is the conscience of the House, and we all acknowledge that. I am not saying that he is always right - I guess none of us are. We are all concerned about
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gambling problems and would like to achieve a level of responsibility and ensure that we are in a position to protect people who fall prey to gambling-related problems. The Opposition will not support the bill.

The Hon. Dr A. CHESTERFIELD-EVANS [2.47 p.m.]: I am disappointed that the Opposition does not support the bill. The Opposition just conceded that the legislation is perfectly justified, used the euphemism "gaming" for "gambling", then did a little sidestep and stated that it will not support the bill. Dare I say that that is because the Opposition does not want to upset a powerful lobby group; and that is common with major parties. I do not pretend to be an expert on the history of gambling, but for a long time gambling was prohibited with an almost religious fervour.

Some things that were right and proper last century were strengthened by saying, "God said so", so they could not be opposed. Now that concept is often satirised as being prohibitive and anti-fun. The idea that gambling is a social evil and will do social harm is still correct. People pay lip-service to that idea, but governments, lured by revenue, have been extremely venal and rather than tell people that they need to pay taxes in proportion to their means or other criteria which will be publicly declared, they tell them they are to be taxed on their weaknesses.

The State has relied heavily on that revenue, and has created tremendous human misery in order to get money. When gambling was prohibited and had religious overtones, there was a lot of police corruption. But there was never any serious discussion about the costs of that corruption; there was no financial or social evaluation.

The Lotteries Office conducted a form of gambling that was fairly well controlled. People went to a lotteries office, bought a ticket, stuck it on their wall and waited for several weeks or months wondering whether they would win. They got a thrill from that waiting process, and the community got the Opera House and various other benefits. The idea was they were normal people, not addicted gamblers, and a lot of public good was achieved from that.

When Lotto came from overseas it was suggested it should be run by the Lotteries Office, but for some reason which I believe is quite venal, two-thirds was given to media moguls and the Government retained one-third. With Lotto came gambling advertising; and the famous red ball rising up through the floor pushed the idea of Lotto. I always felt that a black ball falling through the ceiling saying, "My God, our debts have caught up with us, we are in deep trouble now"would have been a more appropriate advertisement.

When America wanted to get rid of tobacco advertising, which had never been banned, a bright young lawyer named John Banzhaf insisted that if there were advertisements for something, there should be advertisements against it. He introduced that provision, but only one-tenth of the money spent on cigarette advertisements was spent on anti-cigarette advertisements. Even so, this had such an effect on consumption that the cigarette advertisements were voluntarily withdrawn from American television.

I wonder whether that is another solution to the problem of gambling advertising: that one-quarter of the amount spent on advertising should be put into a fund and those who are concerned about the harm of gambling can use that money to publicise their concern. I have not had time to draft an amendment along those lines.

Poker machines were initially confined to clubs and, as club are non-profit organisations, the poker machines profits were used for the benefit of club members. It was suggested in this House the other day that clubs are the modern-day social centres for senior citizens; and that poker machines are subsidising nice environments, cheaper food and so on. It is interesting how far our idea of the public good has moved.

Since hotels have been given huge numbers of poker machines their value has more or less doubled overnight. Soon we will have hotels where no-one will want to drink. Hotel gambling has seen a huge increase in the engagement of musical groups, in the employment of security guards, and in hold-up counselling - because of all the hotel hold-ups. I could tell a few stories about women patients of mine who were terrified after being held up at gunpoint while they were cleaning out the tills after the hotels had closed. Needless to say, the hotels had skimped on security guards. Greed has its own culture.

I have a friend who got involved in gambling while he was at school. He was badly slashed by a razor gang for not paying up, so he left Australia and made his life in Germany. He does not dare to return here, and all because he had a gambling problem while still at school. These are random stories that have impinged on me.

It is interesting to look at the report of the Productivity Commission. The total national expenditure on gambling, which it calls losses by
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gamblers, in 1997-98 was $11 billion. The expenditure is double that of 10 years ago and triple that of 15 years ago. That growth may be attributable to the significant increase in the number of gaming machines - their euphemism, not mine. Australia has 21 per cent of the world’s gaming machines, half of which are in New South Wales. In other words, 10 per cent of the world’s gambling machines are in New South Wales, and 40 per cent of Australians are regular gamblers. That is taking a very broad view of gambling in order to soothe the political agenda of those who like to think of gambling as normal behaviour.

On average, Australians spend twice as much on gambling as do Europeans and North Americans, and New South Wales has Australia’s highest rate of expenditure per adult as a percentage of income. However, the Government is quite out of touch with what the people of Australia want. Seventy-five per cent of people surveyed believed that gambling did more harm than good and 92 per cent did not want to see any increase in the number of gaming machines; 23 per cent of the adult population have significant problems, and 1 per cent have severe problems. Problem gamblers account for one-third of total gambling expenditure - that is $3 billion in Australia.

Again, I am quoting from the report of the Productivity Commission, and it is not some bleeding heart organisation. Gambling machines are associated with 65 per cent to 80 per cent of people receiving gambling counselling, there are 97,890 poker machines in New South Wales, and gambling taxes account for 10.4 per cent of New South Wales revenue.

More than 110,000 people are employed directly or indirectly in Australia’s gambling industry, and overseas tourists account for 25 per cent of casino revenue. That is only a fraction of total gambling revenue, however, because most Australians would bet on poker machines in clubs or pubs. New South Wales has a significantly higher prevalence of problem gambling than the other States, and one in 10 problem gamblers are reported as having attempted suicide.

The Mental Health Foundation reports that 75 per cent of problem gamblers who seek help have symptoms of depression, and 66 per cent of New South Wales Gamblers Anonymous members admit to committing offences to support their gambling. So, there is an instant link with crime, just as drug addiction is linked to crime.

Interestingly, this year the Department of Gaming and Racing, which employs 352 staff to police gambling in New South Wales, has had its recurrent budget reduced by 15.9 per cent, and reductions of 28.5 per cent and 41 per cent in last year’s budget are projected for 2000-2001 and 2001-2002 respectively. The figures have been hidden in the 1999 budget, which shows a 2.8 per cent cut, because of the $4.7 million increase in the Casino Community Benefit Fund [CCBF]. However, the department does not receive the CCBF funding, and the CCBF does not fund the department’s activities.

There were 61 staff cuts in the department this year, leading to a total reduction of 173 out of 252 by 2001-2002. This comprises cuts of 26 in the casino surveillance division, 15 in revenue collection, 96 in the compliance division and 18 in technical services. This means that more and more money is being supervised by fewer people. We are getting back to self-regulation, which the Street royal commission and the Productivity Commission say is not a good idea.

Self-regulation is generally regulation of the self, by the self and for the self, and has often been shown to be a farce in Australia. The building and advertising industries are good examples. In the advertising industry, of which I have some experience, self-regulation has been a farce. This was demonstrated some years ago in a book called Advertising Regulation in Australia, which clearly showed that advertisers are basically driven by the dollar, and that the idea of social morality or responsibility for the consequences of the changes in consumption that they elicit is irrelevant.

The BUGA-UP group - Billboard Utilising Graffitists Against Unhealthy Promotions - with which I was associated, had two factions. The moderate faction to which I belonged said it should concentrate on getting rid of tobacco advertising. I did not realise until later that the more prescient members were correct when they wanted to look at the whole effect of advertising on our consumption patterns and whether that effect was good or bad. This applied to alcohol advertising and gambling advertising. Selling shoes for 10 times their worth has its social effect, and that needs to be considered by those who advocate a regulatory framework to achieve a more intelligent use of resources and less social difficulties.

Tobacco advertising was banned as a result of our efforts to satirise such advertising. The person who satirised Jeff Kennett probably had a big effect on the outcome of Victorian election. His straight, slick and satirical advertising made a great deal of difference to the Victorian election. It is a ridiculous notion to suggest that advertising, marketing and satirising do not have any effect on the community.
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Yet marketers still try to pretend that all that advertising does is change people’s gambling habits and change the consumption of cigarettes from one brand to another. It is fatuous to believe that advertising has no effect on the total market. As Mandy Rice-Davies once said, "They would say that, wouldn’t they?"

Marketing is not advertising. It would be primitive for anyone to believe that marketing equalled advertising. We managed to restrict tobacco advertising. Those who embarked on that campaign went through a great deal of controversy and sacrifice and some even went to gaol. It is tragic that that course of action made advertising far more effective for the tobacco industry. At first the industry went to sponsorship and, instead of having to buy a whole television station, it bought rugby league or some other sport, gave them money and obtained a huge amount of advertising time - more even than it could buy if it had all the money in the world.

Other goods were promoted, such as flags, bunting, hats, bags and other promotional tools. Finally, the end point of marketing, which makes it almost unstoppable - apart from the Internet, which is also fairly unstoppable despite the ridiculous efforts of the Federal Government - is changing scripts for plays and films to include favoured behaviour, such as smoking or gambling, and the placement of products. So, industry is effectively leaning on scriptwriters and producers to advertise in that way.

If the bill achieves its aim of banning advertising it will send a strong and partly symbolic message to the community about the unacceptability of gambling. No doubt we would have a profusion of scripts and advertisements depicting people who had suddenly won the lottery and were living a wonderful life - something that would fit in quite well with this soapie period. It could be like Sylvania Waters but perhaps a little more blunt because we would not see the effect of such unaccustomed wealth on the lives of those people.

The main purpose of this bill - to determine what harm is caused by gambling and to determine what can be done to lessen gambling promotion - is a worthwhile endeavour that should be supported. The Australian Democrats support this legislation. My track record in this regard is clear. I spoke to Sir Laurence Street when the royal commission was investigating whether we should have a casino in New South Wales. I commented at that time that the terms of reference of that commission were so restricted that it would not able to recommend against the establishment of the casino.

In the first tender process the Government could not find anyone with a completely clean record to whom it could award the tender. So it had to re-tender, but even after the tender was awarded there were some discussions about probity. Easy money and crime go together extremely well - a point made by Reverend the Hon. F. J. Nile in his second reading speech. I hope this bill undoes the harm that has been done not only by the casino but by the successful hotel and club lobby to increase the number of poker machines in New South Wales.

In 1991 I pointed out to Sir Laurence Street that the gambling industry should have been required to prove that advertising does not cause social harm. Those concerned about social harm should not have had to prove that this huge lobby, with a huge amount of money, would cause social harm. The onus of proof was reversed. After I gave evidence in 1991, Sir Laurence Street conceded that point, although I did not see that issue included in his summary. It may have been beyond his terms of reference, given how restricted they were.

We are now witnessing the harm that gambling is causing, and the Government must take this on board. Given its lack of courage in taking on lobbies - it did not even take on the tobacco lobby 48 years after tobacco was shown to be causing lung cancer - I doubt whether it will take on this lobby. This afternoon Opposition members indicated their support for the legislation but they did not say whether they would vote for it, which is sad. Reverend the Hon. F. J. Nile, with whom I do not always agree, has been courageous in his efforts to introduce legislation to restrict gambling advertising. The Australian Democrats support the bill.

The Hon. M. I. JONES [3.05 p.m.]: I support the Gambling (Anti-Greed) Advertising Prohibition Bill. In recent years we, as a community, have been desensitised to the growth of a pervasive gambling culture. The primary force behind this has been gambling advertising. The correlation between gambling and advertising is clear in both an anecdotal and a statistical sense. The image of helicopters lifting illuminated dice against the harbour backdrop are contrasted with the grim reality: the stream of shuttle buses carrying punters from Sydney’s southern and western suburbs day and night, people goaded into believing in hopeless dreams by slick advertising campaigns. People have a relentless campaign of images and sound bites fed to them at both conscious and subliminal levels. Their addiction is reinforced every day by radio, television and the print media urging people to play.

This bill represents an important first step in turning back the heavy tide of addiction and social
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dislocation that has been caused by the State-sponsored expansion of the gambling industry. The Government, in its search for revenue, has forgotten the moral mandate and duty of care that it owes to the community. The Government has become little more than the State’s largest bookie, at the expense of families and responsible social leadership. As the Australian newspaper correctly observed, the State has become addicted to gambling tax. Despite the Premier’s recognition that chronic gambling is a social menace, the Government is not moving swiftly enough to resolve a crisis which faces our State. Each year in this State gambling on horses, poker machines and lotteries costs every person in New South Wales $734.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics has highlighted a 43 per cent increase in gambling over the past two years. In the last financial year, gambling profits in New South Wales increased by 40 per cent to a total of $4.6 billion. The citizens of New South Wales account for 41 per cent of the money spent on gambling in Australia. In New South Wales in 1999, the odds from being a chronic gambler are: that one is 19 per cent more likely to be bankrupted; 53 per cent are more likely to be divorced; 31 per cent are more likely to be ill; 32 per cent are more likely to be arrested for a criminal offence; and 21 per cent are more likely to be incarcerated in our prison system. The Manager of Sydney’s Wesley Gambling Counselling Service, Mitchell Brown, commented:

There is no doubt with higher gambling problems, we see a whole range of things including relationships breaking down and higher levels of criminal behaviour.

Major Ken Sanz of the Salvation Army Rehabilitation Service has said that for every one gambling addict, at least 10 other people will suffer. About 50 suicides each year can be attributed to seeing no other way out of a chronic gambling cycle. Having attended today a funeral for a victim of suicide, this bill has added potency and meaning for me. The reality of advertising attracts not the high rollers displayed in the media; rather, it attracts the elderly and low-income earners. The concept is to create a desirable alternative to the grind and concerns of day-to-day life. The illusion is inviting and deceptive, not preparing people for the divide between what is harmless and fun and what can become a dangerous addiction. As Reverend Tim Costello of the National Interchurch Gambling Task Force pointed out:

The people who are gambling the most are in the poorer socio-economic groups. They haven’t benefited from the economic upsurge. All this does is widen the gap.

The bills seeks to address the causes of the growing problem of pathological and chronic gambling. In the same way, over the past 10 years the Government has responsibly recognised the direct link between cigarette tobacco advertising and addiction, and has acted to curb the impact of tobacco advertising on the community. However, the Government has become too concerned with revenue. The time has come for the Government to act responsibly and introduce the necessary legislation that will end the reinforcement of gambling as an attractive social option.

I assert clearly that I am not a wowser, and in no way do I seek to prohibit a person’s right to gamble. However, the incredible growth rate of the gambling industry and problems associated with chronic gambling cannot be ignored. Whilst I am not prepared to spray graffiti on billboards promoting gambling, I seek to act constructively in the interests of the people in New South Wales. I urge all honourable members to assert control on the spread of this problem and to support this bill because it will place the necessary checks on a crisis facing the community.

The Hon. P. J. BREEN [3.11 p.m.]: I too support the Gambling (Anti-Greed) Advertising Prohibition Bill. The Hon. M. I. Jones outlined the statistics that support the proposition that the Government is likely to be the largest gambling addict. The amount of revenue that we as citizens of New South Wales receive from gambling is obscene to say the least. Often we forget that gambling takes away the work ethic. It suggests to those addicted to it that gambling is an alternative to work and to dedication. If you have an opportunity to win a big prize without the hard work and commitment that might otherwise be put in, the net effect is that we are limited as a society and we do not have the same kind of initiative, dedication and commitment that we might otherwise have.

The bill is interesting as it provides for Internet gambling, which the Productivity Commission report suggests is a serious problem. The Government’s responsible gambling bill has not addressed Internet gambling. Clause 9 is another good provision of the Gambling (Anti-Greed) Advertising Prohibition Bill: it prohibits the giving of free samples or the provision of free services for the purposes of gambling. How often do we see advertisements suggesting that we will win - Lotto or a trip to Fiji - by simply joining up for some service? The chances of winning are never advertised. The opportunities of winning are never known because the State, I suggest, relies so much on gambling revenue.

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The gambling industry ought to be treated in the same way as the tobacco industry. It should be restricted so people do not get the impression that by gambling they will somehow be rewarded or have a better life. The reality is that gamblers are not rewarded. This bill will outlaw gambling advertising in its entirety. The tobacco industry operates that way, and the gambling industry ought to operate in the same way. Whilst the social cost of gambling is high, the question is whether some gambling advertising ought to be allowed so long as it is not misleading. I support Reverend the Hon. F. J. Nile in outlawing all gambling advertising.

The provision in the bill for family impact studies or assessments on gambling is an interesting measure and it deserves support. After all, impact statements and studies are undertaken on environmental issues. We know that gambling impose a risk on children. In the interests of our children, family impact studies should be undertaken to identify those areas of risk. One provision of the bill that causes some concern is the suggestion that it should be an offence to ask a person to participate in gambling.

This provision is broad and could be interpreted to extend to someone asking a friend to join in a card game. It would be unreasonable to suggest that is an offence. I do not believe that the criminal law should be used to infringe on what is really freedom of speech, which I believe should be protected at every opportunity - particularly after today! This measure is constitutionally questionable. With that exception I recommend to the House that the bill be supported.

The Hon. P. T. PRIMROSE [3.16 p.m.]: In my contribution to debate on the Gambling (Anti-Greed) Advertising Prohibition Bill I undertake not to raise constitutional issues.

The Hon. M. R. Egan: Are you a wowser too?

The Hon. P. T. PRIMROSE: Absolutely! And a teetotaller.

The Hon. M. R. Egan: Do you all want a nanny State? Can’t do this, can’t do that, can’t do anything! The Hon. R. D. Dyer is another wowser over here!

The Hon. P. T. PRIMROSE: I am concerned about the gender issues being raised in the interjections, but it is not appropriate to respond to them at this time. For posterity it is worth considering some of the issues raised in the objects of the bill. The objects state that bill seeks to discourage the proliferation of all forms of gambling:

(a) by prohibiting advertising of existing forms of gambling and gambling facilities, and

(b) by prohibiting advertising and other promotional activities aimed at publicising new forms of gambling and new gambling facilities, and

(c) by prohibiting the use of any form of gambling to support the sponsorship of any government or community activities, including (but not limited to) sporting activities, and -

Having spoken now for all of about 30 seconds, and having gone over some of the important measures -

The Hon. J. H. Jobling: Two minutes, actually, reading the cover of the bill.

The Hon. P. T. PRIMROSE: Two minutes, less the time taken by interjections. These issues are worthy of consideration and there are numerous interjections.

The Hon. J. H. Jobling: He’s driven the Treasurer out!

The Hon. P. T. PRIMROSE: The Treasurer is also concerned about these issues, unlike Opposition members, who do not want me to speak.

Reverend the Hon. F. J. Nile: We want you to speak. We are very pleased.

The Hon. P. T. PRIMROSE: I thank Reverend the Hon. F. J. Nile, as I am happy to speak to the bill.

Reverend the Hon. F. J. Nile: On these issues we have a lot in common with the left wing of the ALP - the moral conscience of the Labor Party.

The Hon. P. T. PRIMROSE: The left wing of the ALP is the moral conscience of the Parliament. Whilst we may have our differences, those of us in the progressive sections of various political parties share a concern for social justice. However, sometimes we may have some slight disagreement on the mechanisms to achieve that result, and whether we have ritual burnings et cetera, but be that as it may. Object (d) of the bill states:

by requiring studies and assessments to be made of the impact of existing gambling legislation on families and the community.

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The bill also aims to increase public awareness of the problems associated with gambling, and to promote government support for community and other services that assist those affected adversely by gambling. I will not go through the various clauses of the bill at this stage.

The Hon. J. H. Jobling: You have so far!

The Hon. P. T. PRIMROSE: It is obvious that members of the Opposition have not read the bill because they are urging me to go through the various clauses. I am delighted to do so, if that is what they wish me to do.

The Hon. Carmel Tebbutt: Please do!

The Hon. P. T. PRIMROSE: The Minister also wishes me to do it. Perhaps I will talk about the various parts of the bill. Part 1 outlines the name of the bill and Acts to bind the Crown. Part 2 deals with prohibitions on gambling promotion. I know the Hon. J. H. Jobling will be interested in clause 6, which prohibits a display of gambling advertisements that can be seen or heard from a public place, the broadcasting or transmission of gambling advertisements and the distribution of objects that constitute or contain a gambling advertisement, except in certain circumstances.

Clause 13 - which was the Opposition’s favourite number in the last couple of elections - provides for the removal of advertisements promoting gambling if they are displayed illegally. Part 3 deals with family impact statements. Clause 15 requires the Minister administering the Children (Care and Protection) Act 1987 to prepare a family impact study for current and proposed legislation relating to gambling. Clause 19 describes how the Minister is to prepare a study. Subclause (1) states:

To prepare a Family Impact Study, the Minister required to prepare it is to consider the moral, social and economic effect of the legislation or proposed legislation on the family unit and whether that effect contradicts or adversely affects the Judeo-Christian ethic.

I am not sure what the Judeo-Christian ethic is in today’s society, but in recent debates in relation to multiculturalism -

Reverend the Hon. F. J. Nile: Ask the Catholic right wing. They know the answer.

The Hon. P. T. PRIMROSE: I will certainly ask them over coffee at the next bingo game I attend. I am concerned about limiting any family impact statement to consideration of a term as loose as the "Judeo-Christian ethic". My psychology training is to consider behaviour and attitude rather than an amorphous term such as "ethic", particularly in relation to preparing studies. Any approach to gambling legislation needs to address a number of issues raised in the inquiry into gambling by the Independent Pricing and Regulatory Tribunal, and also the draft report into gaming industries by the Productivity Commission. If one considered the proposals in the reports, I suspect they would set up a framework for a responsible gaming environment.

I am concerned about the view that advertising, and advertising alone, leads to gambling. Clearly, as I am reminded of earlier debates on this and other topics, I am not aware of a lot of advertising in the Roman Empire, but there was certainly gambling. I am not aware of extensive advertising in medieval England, where there was extensive gambling.

The Hon. D. F. Moppett: There was a lot of political advertising in Roman days.

The Hon. P. T. PRIMROSE: Certainly, and quite an amount of graffiti.

The Hon. D. F. Moppett: It was discovered in Pompeii.

The Hon. P. T. PRIMROSE: I have read the translations of the graffiti to which the Hon. D. F. Moppett is referring. But I am not aware of advertisements that said, "Vote for Caesar; come to Josephus’ casino tonight."

The Hon. D. F. Moppett: They probably went there after the election.

The Hon. P. T. PRIMROSE: Maybe they did. If they were in the progressive Labor section they obviously would have had good cause to celebrate. Chikarovskius - who knows? Specific things in today’s environment should be addressed when discussing a responsible gaming environment. One is education, such as a mandatory training program for gaming staff. Any legislation that seeks to address this issue should consider that sort of thing. Responsible advertising should be considered, and I do not downplay totally the effect of advertising, through the development of advertising standards to cover gaming products.

Reverend the Hon. F. J. Nile: Remember your support for tobacco advertising?

The Hon. P. T. PRIMROSE: Absolutely! Labelling, signage and brochures to improve the effectiveness of signs should be very much a part of
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any concerns relating to advertising and responsibility of developing what I have termed a responsible gaining environment. We need further enforcement of the prohibition of gaming on credit. We need the provision of complementary inducements. We need improved consumer protection, and I know this is certainly something that the Hon. John Watkins agrees with.

The Hon. J. R. Johnson: Money back first bet.

The Hon. P. T. PRIMROSE: The Hon. J. R. Johnson has mentioned one possibility, although I am not totally sure that it will not be seen as an inducement as opposed to a consumer protection. Be that as it may, he is certainly in line and he is considering some of the issues I have highlighted about a responsible gaming environment. The development of self-exclusion programs is absolutely critical, as is the limiting of access to automatic teller machines outside gaming areas. I am very pleased with the recent announcement in this regard. The Government has established a high-level working party to consider these matters. I look forward to further debate and deliberations on this matter in due course, as we move through the legislation of Reverend the Hon. F. J. Nile and consider pending Government legislation to develop a responsible gaming environment.

The Hon. Dr P. WONG [3.27 p.m.]: I support the bill introduced by Reverend the Hon. F. J. Nile, which aims to address the diverse social, economic and cultural effects of gambling. The bill focuses on a very important issue associated with the gambling problem: advertising. The bill aims to prohibit all forms of advertising of existing and future gambling facilities in New South Wales. I support the principles of the bill and its objectives of rational regulation of the gambling industry in New South Wales. It is necessary to place restrictions on gambling advertising. The active and usually deceptive nature of the advertising has given rise to grave moral, social and economic concerns for many families, communities and society as a whole. Restrictions must be placed on the time, form, extent and manner in which gaming facilities are advertised in the mass media.

Government policies towards gambling have undergone radical changes in recent years. Instead of prohibiting or keeping gambling in highly controlled public forms, the Government allows and encourages the development of casinos and other gambling facilities in New South Wales. The expansion of such facilities has been regarded as a way to stimulate economic viability and to attract overseas tourists, especially in the past 10 years. With the encouragement from the Government gambling has escalated not only in terms of its forms - ranging from traditional horse racing and lotteries to modern electronic gaming machines - but also in terms of its availability.

Gaming machines have gone out of restricted places, such as casinos and pubs, to public houses and hotels. This has brought about huge revenue for State coffers. According to the Federal Productivity Commission draft report on Australia’s gambling industry, the revenue from the industry in the past 10 years has doubled. Governments may have achieved short-term economic benefit, but we should be mindful that our public good is at risk. It is a worrying trend because studies have revealed that gambling has developed into a problem specifically related to less privileged and working-class people. The problems usually add to the frustrated financial situation, destroying families and lives.

Advertising has certainly played an important role in creating an illusion about the chance of winning. Gambling is no doubt a social evil, similar to alcohol and cigarettes. It endangers the physical, psychological and financial health of gamblers. The popularity of casinos among the ethnic community is well known. It appears that the very high percentage of casino clientele is Asian in appearance. Information from the news media also confirms that only a small proportion of these people are from overseas - they are mainly local residents.

Many small businesses in the outer western areas have been destroyed, which has led to thousands of bankruptcies and family breakdowns. Restrictions should be placed on mass advertising. Placing sensible restrictions on gambling advertising is not in conflict with the freedom of choice or civil liberties. People have a free choice as to whether they go and when they go to casinos. However, free choice becomes not so free when it is influenced by unscrupulous advertising.

Problem gambling has a real potential to destroy lives in the economic, social and psychological sense; yet gambling advertising at present does not warn about those dangers. Instead, there is promotion of the slim chance of winning. Gambling advertising aims to persuade people to buy hope in this hopeless world, so to speak. In this context, I advocate a restriction on gambling advertising in New South Wales. First, gambling advertisements should always be accompanied by a proper warning related to the true odds of winning.

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High professional ethical standards should be established to ensure the truth of any promotion. Second, gambling advertisements should be limited in such a manner as to avoid exposure of gambling facilities and products to children. Third, gambling advertisements should be limited to certain places, such as inside casinos or pubs. Wherever gambling advertisements are on display, a warning about the true odds of winning should always accompany them.

There should be a restructuring of government bodies that regulate the gambling industry. An independent gaming authority should be established in New South Wales to oversee all gaming-related functions. It should be separate from enforcement agencies. Services for problem gamblers should be provided on a continuous basis, including support for their families. Problem gamblers are mainly supported by charity groups, very seldom by government services. More importantly, the Government should initiate educational programs to increase public awareness of gambling and related issues. I hope that all these issues will be addressed by the forthcoming Government legislation on responsible gambling. I congratulate Reverend the Hon. F. J. Nile on his efforts to address this very difficult social problem.

The Hon. R. D. DYER [3.32 p.m.]: I have been emboldened to enter this debate by the contribution made by my colleague the Hon. P. T. Primrose, who stated among other things that he believes this legislation is worthy of consideration. I happen to share that view. As a lawyer, I am also emboldened to speak my mind on this matter on the basis of a precedent set by the Hon. Barrie Unsworth. I well remember many years ago, when the Hon. Barrie Unsworth was a member of this House and prior to his becoming a Minister, he chose to speak in trenchant terms against Government legislation to set up the Police Board of New South Wales. At that time the Hon. Barrie Unsworth had strong links to the Labor Council of New South Wales whose constituent, the Police Association, was very much opposed to the Police Board legislation.

I am not here to speak against a piece of Government legislation because this happens to be a private member’s bill. However, it may well be that the Government has reservations, to say the very least, concerning the legislation brought before the Parliament by Reverend the Hon. F. J. Nile.

I will state my position regarding this matter in general terms. Recently I was surveyed by the Daily Telegraph about my attitude to gambling. In a semi-jocular fashion, I said, "As a former Methodist" - by definition I have to be a former Methodist because that church no longer exists in New South Wales - "I would not know anything about gambling." That comment was translated into a firm position on my part.

I also stated that the only form of gambling in which I participate is the purchase of a raffle ticket. Those raffle tickets happen to be purchased in the main from the Hon. J. R. Johnson. I regard the purchase of a raffle ticket from the Hon. J. R. Johnson as a donation. I have been purchasing raffle tickets from him for the last to 30 or 40 years without ever having won anything. When I discussed this matter on one occasion in the House someone said to me that I came dangerously close to suggesting that it is impossible to win one of the Hon. J. R. Johnson’s raffles.

I regard the prospect of winning anything as remote, to say the least. As I do not believe there is a reasonable prospect of winning, I cannot be committing the sin of avarice. That is the extent of my participation in that type of activity. Moreover, I was taught at a Methodist Sunday school that gambling is avarice. The Hon. J. R. Johnson knows my views regarding this matter, although he would not agree with them. So far as the bill before the House is concerned, I must say that I have not had the opportunity to give it detailed consideration. It may be said that some of its provisions are somewhat draconian in their reach. I agree with Reverend the Hon. F. J. Nile that the extent of gambling in the community has started to become a matter of very grave concern.

More than 20 years ago when I was a member of the personal staff of the Hon. Ron Mulock, who later became a Cabinet Minister holding various portfolios and then Deputy Premier, I used to conduct electoral interviews for him once a week in the Penrith electorate. I have never forgotten a woman who came to see me whom I interviewed. She had major concerns about her personal circumstances arising from her husband’s gambling habits. She told me that her husband was putting his wages through the poker machines. She was at her wits end because she was being evicted from the premises where she lived and she was faced with other consequences of that seriousness. She was weeping in front of me and I found that very difficult to deal with. I hardly knew what to say.

There are many examples in our society of men and women in similar circumstances who have been reduced to a dreadful situation because of their addiction to gambling. I regret that the Treasurer is
Page 1152
not in the Chamber because he and I have had many spirited discussions from time to time about this very matter of gambling. His view is that it is not possible to protect people from their own behaviour. However, my response to that it is that, while that may be so, temptation should not be dangled in front of people at every street corner, so to speak.

I will leave aside the situation in this State and turn my attention to Melbourne. When I have visited Melbourne it has seemed to me that there are gambling shops all over the place. The establishments are literally street-frontage-type shops. I believe that, if gambling outlets become as accessible, promoted and obvious as that, they become an irresistible temptation for many people. That will be a very big problem.

A recent Productivity Commission report referred to the extent of poker machines and other gambling activities in our State. It drew attention to the dimensions of the problem. I do not suppose that all gambling outlets can be wiped out, but we have reached the point where we need to consider - and the Premier has made similar comments in recent times - some cap or ceiling at the very least. The Premier may have slightly backed away from that even more recently, however, we have reached the point where consideration needs to be given to what can be done to reduce the adverse impact of gambling.

Reverend the Hon. F. J. Nile has advocated various prohibitions and restrictions regarding advertising; that approach may be worthy of consideration. However, I am sure Reverend the Hon. F. J. Nile would agree with me that there are other matters which need to be considered. A moment ago I referred to a cap, or a moratorium, on further growth on the various forms of gambling. The Government needs to consider that further. Mr Deputy-President, I wanted to place my views on the record and if you read in Hansard that I made some earlier reference to you and your raffles please do not take offence.

The DEPUTY-PRESIDENT (The Hon. J. R. Johnson): I will not take offence - and I will not take a gate either!

The Hon. R. D. DYER: Mr Deputy-President, I did not say that it is impossible to win one of your raffles; I merely said that it appears to be a remote possibility. Quite seriously, this measure - even though some may think it to be cavalier in its concept and impact - deserves mature and detailed consideration.

Debate adjourned on motion by the Hon. Elaine Nile.

Debate resumed from 16 September.

Reverend the Hon. F. J. NILE [3.44 p.m.]: I strongly support the Sexual Offence Damages Bill that was introduced by the Hon. Elaine Nile. The object of the bill is to allow the recovery of damages in respect of the death of or injury to a person resulting from or arising out of an act constituting a sexual offence, such as rape, from persons who produce, distribute, exhibit, broadcast, disseminate or sell pornographic material which motivated the offender to commit the offence.

In her second reading speech the Hon. Elaine Nile outlined some cases which have set the precedent for this type of offence involving alcohol and other matters. In some cases the person who commenced an action that caused the death of another person - for example, had sold the person alcohol - has been sued for damages. I can cite many cases. Those cases have opened up a new way of looking at social issues. There is legislation to classify and ban pornography, which society has accepted; I do not say that that procedure should stop. During previous debate on this bill there were interjections about the connection between this bill and pornography.

The bill provides that people who produce pornographic videos, magazines and similar material ought to think twice - the person who writes, publishes, prints or sells pornographic material could be penalised. This would have to be proved in a courtroom setting. There would have to be evidence that a man attacked a woman or a child, or maybe another man, to prove to the court that the man was motivated by a pornographic video or magazine. Under the provisions of this bill if a person is found guilty and is sent to prison, the victim could sue either the publisher or producer of the pornographic video or magazine which incited the offender to attack the victim.

At this stage there is a gap in the law; there is no provision for the victim to sue in those circumstances. The Christian Democratic Party proposes that the victim could, through the court, sue for damages of $1 million. That penalty would have a strong controlling influence over people who produce pornographic material. People produce material without any social conscience, without worrying about inciting a man to rape a woman or attack a child - they consider only the profits. However, if this bill became law people would have to decide whether they could afford to produce pornographic material which may lead to them being sued.

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The Hon. D. F. Moppett: Does this introduce a defence for the perpetrator, to say he was incited by the material?

Reverend the Hon. F. J. NILE: Some people say that now in court cases. However, it would have to be shown to be a genuine defence. Obviously they could not use that as a defence for the victim to sue the publisher, but it has been shown in court cases through police evidence. I have read the background of a case in which a paedophile had been charged with abusing children. When the man was arrested the police went to his car - often a paedophile parks his car outside a children’s kindergarten or playground - and found child pornography, which he had been looking at before committing the offence, sitting on the front seat.

The Hon. Jan Burnswoods: How can you possibly link that with the offence?

Reverend the Hon. F. J. NILE: I am citing a practical case in which pornographic material was sitting on the seat of the man’s car. He then abused a child. The link would have to be proven in court.

The Hon. Jan Burnswoods: How can you link an item on a car seat with causation?

Reverend the Hon. F. J. NILE: The whole point is that a man may be incited by material he is reading - he then goes and attacks a woman or a child.

The Hon. Jan Burnswoods: How could you prove that in a court of law? This is probably the silliest bill ever introduced.

Reverend the Hon. F. J. NILE: But the mother of the child could then sue the publisher of the material. In court the evidence would have to be weighed up. The judgment would not be given on an impression. It would have to be argued in court that there was a connection between the material and the attack on the child or the woman.

I cannot prove that, but it would have to be proved to the court’s satisfaction. The tribunal hearing the evidence would make a decision based on the evidence that there were grounds for the woman to sue the publisher, the printer, or the person selling the material. The judge would make the decision, not Fred Nile. The Hon. Jan Burnswoods said it cannot be proved. Let us put it to the test. Let someone sue the publisher and let us see what the courts say. Let the judge make the decision. The honourable member says, "Let us give up on trying to reduce the number of rape attacks and assaults on children in our society." I will not give up.

The Hon. Jan Burnswoods: I do not have this absolute obsession with sex that you two have.

Reverend the Hon. F. J. NILE: I am obsessed with protecting women and children in our society from sexual assaults. It is strange that the honourable member, being a woman, is not concerned. I understand why. It puzzles me that the women of the left wing of the Labor Party have a philosophical position: they are reluctant to do anything about restricting pornography. One has only to mention women being assaulted and associate it with pornography and women on the Government side shout, "censorship". It is a knee-jerk reaction. I am puzzled about what motivates women to have that attitude. They have to live with their consciences.

We are obsessed with protecting women and children from sexual assaults. Even if honourable members do not believe it will work, we should try it. In the United States of America many people are successfully suing the third party: the person who supplied the alcohol, the pornography, or whatever it may be that caused the offence. I am concerned about the 1996 statistics produced by the New South Wales Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research, which are the latest figures available. They show that in New South Wales during the previous 12 months 490,400 women experienced violence - that should concern the Hon. Jan Burnswoods - 132,300 women experienced sexual violence; 98,400 women experienced a sexual assault; and 44,800 women experienced a sexual threat. I am concerned about those high figures. I am also concerned that, from the evidence, they are increasing pro rata in our society.

In the 12 months prior to this survey133,100 women experienced an incident of sexual violence. That included sexual assaults involving acts of a sexual nature carried out against the women’s will as well as threats of sexual assaults which the women believed were likely to be carried out. Sexual violence was almost exclusively - 99 per cent - perpetrated by men. Sadly, many men are influenced in a negative and harmful way by what they read in pornographic magazines and what they see in pornographic videos. Three-quarters of women who experience sexual violence, that is 100,000, reported incidents of sexual assaults in the previous 12 months, and 44,800 women reported threats of sexual assault. Those figures should concern this House. If a bill such as ours does something to reduce the number of those cases, surely the House should support it.

Debate this afternoon has focused mainly on the Gambling (Anti-Greed) Advertising Prohibition Bill, and I have been advised by both sides of the House that very few members have had the
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opportunity to study the Sexual Offence Damages Bill. As far as I am aware, no other members are ready to debate the bill. For that reason, and to allow time for members on both sides of the House to give serious consideration to the bill, I ask that further debate on the bill be adjourned until 14 October.

Debate adjourned on motion by Reverend the Hon. F. J. Nile.

The Hon. D. J. GAY [3.55 p.m.]: I move the following motion, as amended by leave:

1. That under Standing Order 18, there be laid upon the table of this House and made public without restricted access no later than 5.00 p.m. Thursday 7 October 1999 the following documents, including all relevant letters, memoranda and files whether recorded in written or electronic form

(a) correspondence between Integral Energy and the New South Wales Government, Treasury and shareholding Ministers relating to energy trading losses,

(b) advice given to Board members of Integral Energy relating to futures trading losses,

(c) dates of disclosure and quantum in dollars of losses,

(d) responses by the Integral Energy board to the Chief Executive Officer and the Government,

(e) impact of finance of Integral Energy as a trading enterprise and the documents relating to the closure of customer and appliance sales centres,

(f) impact on dividends payable to the New South Wales Government,

(g) any directions given by New South Wales Treasury officers to the Integral Energy board or officers of Integral Energy relating to trading losses, and

(h) actions by Integral Energy of measures to be taken to prevent a repetition of such losses and to whom these were reported.

2. That an indexed list of documents under this resolution be prepared showing the date of creation of the document, a description of the document and the author of the document.

3. That any report, return or any other paper required to be laid upon the table of the House by this resolution may be lodged with the Clerk of the House if the House is not sitting and is deemed for all purposes to have been presented or laid before the House.

Many members may not believe that I have moved this motion with a degree of reluctance. That reluctance comes from the fact that on no less than 12 occasions in this House I have asked a relatively simple question, one that goes to the good management of the finances of the State - something for which the Treasurer, as a shareholding Minister, has a degree of fidelity and a degree of responsibility. Another reason I regret that I have to move this motion and go through the back door to obtain information that should be put before the people of the State is that before two estimate committees of this House the same information was sought.

I would have thought that if the budget estimates were as they should be, Ministers would not be able to cover up and deny information. This is information that should properly be put before the people of the State. To deny it indicates the degree of secrecy and arrogance that is sneaking in, and that should be of concern. Members in the other place said that there were lessons to be learned from the Victorian elections and that the Government has learned them, but I suspect that it has not. It is still continuing with the policies that swept Government members out of their seats in regional Victoria, with compulsory competitive tendering and compulsory amalgamations in local government.

Many honourable members would be surprised to see a cocky’s son from Crookwell and a former chairman of the National Party standing on the back of a truck with the Municipal Employees Union [MEU] while 1,000 MEU members supported the stand we were taking against a Labor Government. I admitted to the people assembled at that meeting - as I admit to the House today - that I had problems remembering the words to the song Solidarity Forever, and I had difficulty singing the song.

The Hon. Jan Burnswoods: Did you actually sing?

The Hon. D. J. GAY: The Hon. Jan Burnswoods asked me whether I sang. I hummed to the chorus.

The Hon. Jan Burnswoods: Did you ever utter the word "solidarity"?

The Hon. D. J. GAY: On at least three occasions when I was humming, the word "solidarity" passed my lips. It was an important watershed for me - one that I suspect this Government will come to regret. This matter dates back to 26 May 1999, when John Turner asked this question in the Legislative Assembly:

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My question is to the Minister for Information Technology, Minister for Energy, Minister for Forestry and Minister for Western Sydney. Will the Minister confirm that Integral Energy has lost in excess of $80 million on energy trading and proposes to close its 16 customer and appliance sales centres and associated warehouses on 30 June next, with some 90 staff facing redundancy or redeployment.

I would have thought that was a pretty reasonable question. The reply from Mr Charm, Mr Song-and-Dance Man, Mr Friend of All, Kim Yeadon was, "No, I will not confirm." That sort of answer excites an Opposition. We had asked a simple question: Had Integral Energy lost the money? Does that mean staff will be laid off?" The answer from smiling Kim was, "No, I will not confirm." That was the start. A series of questions then followed, the first of which was asked by my colleague the Hon. J. H. Jobling. On 27 May this year the Hon. J. H. Jobling asked the Treasurer:

In view of the Treasurer’s public statement that Treasury has launched an investigation into Integral Energy’s $43 million profit forecast plunge, will he confirm whether Integral Energy lost $80 million on the energy trading market . . .

We then had three pages of yabber, yabber, yabber, and the Minister did not come within a bull’s roar of answering the question. In fact, halfway through the Minister’s answer, in exasperation, I took a point of order and said:

The Treasurer has been asked an important question about the loss of $80 million of consumers’ money, yet he is indulging in a personal vilification -

as he does -

rather than answering the question. I ask that he be directed to answer the question.

After another page or so of yabber, yabber, yabber the Hon. J. H. Jobling took a point of order. The President reminded the Minister that, under Standing Order 81, imputation of improper motives was disorderly. The Treasurer said:

As I pointed out, this year Integral Energy will return approximately $60 million profit to the shareholders, the taxpayers of New South Wales. I wish that figure were higher; it should be higher. As a result of the . . . retail activities . . .

We had more verbiage and then the Hon. J. H. Jobling again asked:

I ask the Minister a supplementary question. I again ask the Treasurer to confirm that Integral Energy lost $80 million on the energy trading market. Will he answer the question as to whether Treasury is carrying out similar investigations into other power distributors? Is the Government looking at Great Southern Energy? Is the closure of Great Southern Energy’s customer service desk in Goulburn, due tomorrow . . .

Once again, the Treasurer did not answer; he refused to answer the question. On 1 June this year we again trotted out the issue. My question to the Treasurer on that occasion was:

On 20 January did the Treasurer, as one of the two shareholders, send a letter to the Chairman of Integral Energy approving the formation of the subsidiary company Integral Energy Appliance Sales Pty Ltd? Is this the same company that he advised the House last week will, after only four months trading, close its customer and appliance sales centres because, as he explained, it was "uncompetitive"

Honourable members should understand that I was asking the Minister, one of the shareholding Ministers, whether he sent a letter on 20 January approving the formation of this subsidiary company. One would have thought that when the Treasurer - as the Treasurer of this State responsible for the State’s finances and as a shareholder in this company - approved the formation of this company, he or some of the people who work for him would have checked out its viability. Four months later this organisation closed, resulting in a large loss of jobs in regional New South Wales. The numbers were out and people were starting to get concerned.

We quite rightly asked whether that was as a result of the $80 million that was lost, or reportedly lost. No-one has told us whether that money was lost. We keep asking the questions. All that one of the Ministers had to say was "No, $80 million was not lost." On one of the 12 occasions that we asked these questions all we needed was the answer, "No, you are wrong. Here is the report." That is all that we wanted. We did not want the yabber, yabber, yabber and, four pages later, a personal vilification with no answer; we wanted a simple, "No you are wrong, and this is why you are wrong."

We are here today because of the Government’s continuous secrecy. I am aware that the Government wishes to move certain amendments to my motion. I thank the Minister for Juvenile Justice, Minister Assisting the Premier on Youth, and Minister Assisting the Minister for the Environment for showing me the Government’s foreshadowed amendments. I am willing to accept those fair amendments to my motion. After I asked those questions on 1 June, the Treasurer said:

The Hon. D. J. Gay indicated that he has a copy of a letter. I readily concede that I do not remember the detail of the thousands of letters that I sign every day. I would be happy if the honourable gentleman were to give me a copy of the letter that he purports I sent to the Chairman of Integral Energy and I will check to see whether it accords with correspondence that left my office.

I asked a supplementary question:

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Will the Treasurer table all documents relating to this matter, including the confidential portion of the statement by the chief executive officer that was provided to the shareholder Ministers - and I remind the Treasurer that he is one of them - and all documentation relating to the outsourcing of Integral Energy’s debt management function to the Rand Merchant Bank?

The Treasurer replied:

Integral Energy is a statutory-owned corporation and as such it operates in a commercial manner. It is responsible to its board of directors and, of course, commercial correspondence is not the type of material that is publicly available.

Once again the Treasurer did not answer the question. On 3 June I again said to the Treasurer that I had given him 48 hours to consider the letter of 20 January on the formation of the appliance sales. I asked whether he stood by his statement to the House that the customer appliance centres would close before they become uncompetitive and whether they had to close because of the $80 million. The Treasurer said:

As I pointed out on Tuesday it is anticipated that Integral Energy will make a profit of about $50 million this year. It is true that on 20 January I approved the formation of a subsidiary to Integral Energy known as Integral Energy Appliance Sales Pty Ltd. The decision about whether Integral Energy is going to sell electrical appliances is a commercial matter for Integral Energy.

I would have thought that would be a matter of interest to the Treasurer, who purports to have a responsibility to the taxpayers of this State. This major company, of which he is a shareholder, had to close down just four months after it commenced. Either the Treasurer missed something when he allowed the company to be set up or something went amiss. We need this information. Those are the sorts of questions we have asked in this House and in the estimates committee hearings, yet the Government, in its usual arrogant, secret manner, has refused us access to those documents. On 23 June I again asked whether the Treasurer’s report on Integral Energy’s half-yearly results, due in early June, revealed that Integral Energy lost $80 million on futures trading or whether that figure was closer to $100 million. The Treasurer said:

I apologise, Madam President. I was about to refer to you as Speaker as I thought I was still in the other place.

The Hon. Patricia Forsythe said, "Wishful thinking". There was then the usual interplay and I took a point of order asking the Treasurer to answer the question because people were concerned about it.

The Hon. Carmel Tebbutt: We could read all this in Hansard ourselves.

The Hon. D. J. GAY: The Minister indicates that we could read it in Hansard ourselves. The problem is that no-one on the Government benches has read it. The Treasurer said that he had answered my question when he had not, and that is the reason for my motion. On 24 June, 28 June and so on he kept saying, "I have answered the question. Why do you keep asking this question that I have answered?" I say to the Treasurer, if he is listening in his room, or to his staff, who are in the Chamber, that he has never answered the question in this House or in the estimates committee. I have moved this motion in this back-door way to obtain the information from the Government.

As I said at the beginning of my contribution, I regret that this is the situation, and I suspect that when the Coalition wins government after the next election it will regret that it had to use these forms. However, had the Treasurer in this House been part of an open and accountable government I would not have had to move this motion. I commend my motion to the House and urge fellow members to support it.

The Hon. CARMEL TEBBUTT (Minister for Juvenile Justice, Minister Assisting the Premier on Youth, and Minister Assisting the Minister for the Environment) [4.14 p.m.]: I move:

That the motion be amended by inserting at the end:

4. Where it is considered that a document required to be tabled under this order is privileged and should not be made public or tabled:

(a) a return is to be prepared and tabled showing the date of creation of the document, a description of the document, the author of the document and reasons for the claim of privilege; and

(b) the documents are to be delivered to the Clerk of the House by 5.00 p.m. Thursday 7 October 1999; and

(i) made available only to members of the Legislative Council, and

(ii) not published or copied without an order of the House.

5. That in the event of a dispute by any member of the House communicated in writing to the Clerk as to the validity of a claim of legal professional privilege or public interest immunity in relation to a particular document:

(a) the Clerk is authorised to release the disputed document to an independent legal arbiter who is either a Queen’s Counsel, a Senior Counsel or a retired Supreme Court judge, appointed by the President, for evaluation and report within five days as to the validity of the claim, and

(b) any report from the independent arbiter is to be tabled with the Clerk of the House and:

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(i) made available only to members of the Legislative Council, and

(ii) not published or copied without an order of the House.

I note that the Hon. D. J. Gay and his colleagues have tried to distance themselves from their colleagues in Victoria. However, we all know that their colleagues in Victoria have certainly set the high watermark for secrecy with government business, and the electors in Victoria have, quite rightly, responded. Without this amendment the motion would seriously compromise the commercial position of Integral Energy and damage the financial interests of taxpayers. In its current form the motion will give Integral Energy’s private and public sector competitors access to highly sensitive commercial information. The Government’s amendment, however, would limit access to the documents to members of this House and keep them from Integral’s competitors. I take this opportunity to remind honourable members of the words of Justice Priestley in Egan v Chadwick:

In exercising its powers in respect of such documents the Council has the same duty to prevent publication beyond itself of documents the disclosures of which will be inimical to the public interest . . .

It is clear that there is a public interest in protecting the future financial position of Integral Energy and allowing the organisation to implement plans aimed at improving the past financial performance that is the subject of this motion. Furthermore, Integral possesses sensitive information about other people who deal with the corporation, including customers who have an expectation that their personal affairs will be kept private. The private sector competitors of State-owned corporations enjoy complete immunity from any forced disclosure of detailed commercial information relating to the businesses.

Only two of the main private power generators and distributors participating in the national electricity market are listed public companies. These are the only two required to publish their annual accounts, let alone other commercial information. It is for those reasons that I have moved the amendment. It will ensure that access to the documents will be limited to members of this House and will keep them from Integral’s competitors.

The Hon. J. H. JOBLING [4.18 p.m.]: I support the motion moved by the Hon. D. J. Gay. I can also understand the reasoning of the Government in moving what might be the Delta amendment. My colleague has indicated in general terms that he will accept the amendment. At a later stage I will return to the amendment and put a very specific question to the Minister, which I trust will be answered in the affirmative. If it is not, she, too, may go down the path of what might be called the "fill them up with boxes and phone books, paper them down, give them everything they ask for but don’t tell them where it is" trick, which has been used by corporations and companies for many years throughout the world.

The problem that confronts the Opposition is why the shareholding Minister and this Government cannot answer the series of questions put to them. An Opposition is expected to ask reasonable questions of a Government to find out what is happening. If they are not answered one must wonder whether the Government is attempting to hide something that would seriously embarrass it - perhaps create a scandal and be bad for its image and reputation.

This Government is known to be secretive and non-disclosing. This is serious when one considers that Integral Energy and our other energy generating companies and distributors handle extraordinarily large sums of money in one of the biggest cash-flow businesses in the State. Given that huge sums of money are transposed daily from each of their offices, why will the Government not answer questions?

This issue is not new. The House was so concerned about the electricity industry that in the Fifty-first Parliament it asked General Purpose Standing Committee No. 1 to examine specific issues under a number of heads, including the cost of dividends, generation, money, preparations, the so-called Y2K millennium bug and, though I do not intend to canvass it in this debate, privatisation.

Representatives, including directors and general managers, from the Department of Energy, Integral Energy, EnergyAustralia, NorthPower, Advance, Great Southern, Macquarie, Delta and Pacific Power appeared before the committee to answer specific questions dealing with the possibility that those companies would embark on a course of energy trading.

For those who do not know, energy trading is basically a form of futures trading. There is no doubt that one can make a lot money from futures trading if everything works out, but, equally, one could lose everything. A number of private corporations and small and large companies are involved in futures trading, but it is a new development for a State-owned corporation to enter that investment market. Should such a corporation be able to gamble with the wealth of the State,
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happy in the knowledge that it has the support, resources and guarantee of the State Government - which of course is the trustee for the people New South Wales?

In New South Wales only an extremely small number of people have futures market skills. State-owned corporations have no-one with that expertise. Therefore one must wonder why Treasury would approve this action, or whether it directed Integral Energy and EnergyAustralia, who are without experienced staff, to enter the trading market.

The committee heard from a representative of a merchant bank in South-East Asia who is most skilled in electricity generation and determining the buying and selling cost of electricity. His view was, first, that these corporations should not be involved in energy trading; second, that they did not have the expertise; and, third, that there was a high probability of, putting it in the vernacular, losing their shirt.

A United Kingdom group that is further advanced in the electricity industry than our corporations, but which has no policy on futures trading because it does not have the relevant experience, examined what is happening here and was most surprised that we are willing to follow that course of action.

The Special Minister of State, and Assistant Treasurer is the shareholding Minister. He has the power to intervene in the daily activities of corporations such as Integral Energy and approve or veto purchases and sales. What has he to say about all of this? I cannot understand the Treasurer, the Special Minister of State, and the Treasury officials not wanting to know about this latest venture and the daily operations of these enterprises. If Integral Energy were to lose this much money, one could be forgiven for thinking that EnergyAustralia and other corporations in this field are also losing money.

The motion moved under Standing Order 18 by my colleague is fair and reasonable. The Government could have avoided this process had it chosen to answer questions rather than hide behind the commercial-in-confidence argument. In the real business world, a private company hiding behind that defence would be labelled a scoundrel.

The Opposition accepts the Government’s amendment to the motion but I ask the Minister to confirm or deny whether the Government intends, when delivering the documents, to comply with paragraph 2 of the motion and provide an indexed list of the documents supplied. It would present a difficult task if 20 or 30 boxes of documents, or even two boxes of documents, were supplied without an index of their contents.

I remind the Minister of the difficulty encountered in the absence of an index of documents produced by Sydney Water with regard to water supply contamination. If the Government provides an index it will be honest in its production of documents. Perhaps the Minister might give me that assurance.

The Hon. D. F. MOPPETT [4.29 p.m.]: It is clear that this issue would not have become so highly charged had it not been for the resistance of the Government to provide the information on the activities of Integral Energy to which my colleague the Hon. D. J. Gay has referred. The Government’s response to what I think is a proper question on behalf of the public has been prevarication, obfuscation, dissimulation, disingenuousness and secrecy from start to finish. That is why this matter has become a major issue to the people of New South Wales. It is not of itself the problem of Integral Energy.

We know that in this brave new world it is possible that utilities will have their ups and downs, but what is of grave concern is the Government’s reluctance to allow even a pencil light to be shone into this dark shadow with which it has surrounded the whole matter. We must recognise that electricity is now one of the essential resources of our civilised life. We are not talking about some luxury resource in which we indulge. We are not talking about an indulgence such as a gambling habit, which we debated this week. We are talking about one of the most basic and important resources in our society.

It is absolutely essential that the people of New South Wales, the consumers, have full confidence in the administration of their utilities. I can remember - as I am sure the Hon. A. B. Manson, and perhaps some other members, can - the era when electricity generation was, in many cases, the responsibility of local municipalities. It certainly was not extended into the country much beyond the municipalities. In the shires people relied on alternatives to electricity until home lighting plants became available after the war.

The Hon. J. H. Jobling: The old diesel and the Silent Night.

The Hon. D. F. MOPPETT: Yes, indeed! Those who lived in the city - and I am not absolutely sure whether the Hon. A. B. Manson was living in the city at that time - would certainly
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remember the grey years after the war when power supplies were often interrupted. "Blackout" was a common household word. One would listen to the radio to hear whether one’s suburb would be blacked out that night and, if so, for how long. Although "Bunnerong" is quite a lovely word, it almost had connotations of "it will go wrong". In those days people put up with a lot. But we emerged from that difficult time with the help of the ever increasing electricity industry and the Electricity Commission of New South Wales.

The Hon. A. B. Manson: You got it through a Labor Government. We moved away from the Askin era.

The Hon. D. F. MOPPETT: I can assure the honourable member that it was before the Askin era. The blackouts I am talking about occurred in the Mckellar era. We saw the proliferation of electricity plants throughout New South Wales, partly to utilise coal resources in areas like that from which the Hon. J. H. Jobling comes. Those plants played a significant role in diversifying the production of electricity to make it a more reliable commodity. But we have moved on from that stage.

The technical aspects of electricity supply are no longer a problem, although there are some major issues in that regard. What we want to concentrate on is the financial integrity of the electricity system. We are not here to score political points. We have no desire to devalue Integral Energy by speculation and rumour about its financial stability. We want to consolidate public confidence in the company. The only way to do that is to provide information. Where information is denied, speculation and rumour inevitably flourish, and that is what is happening.

This House has to move decisively to ensure that the necessary information is readily made available to honourable members. By that process the appropriate conclusions can be conveyed to the public so that everyone can have confidence in this important utility. It is important that we reach a decision today. I commend the mover of the motion for introducing it, and I commend to the House the substance of the motion. I hope it is passed expeditiously.

The Hon. D. J. GAY [4.35 p.m.], in reply: I thank my colleagues for their learned and concise contributions.

The Hon. D. F. Moppett: And apposite.

The Hon. D. J. GAY: Yes! I also thank the Minister for Juvenile Justice and the Treasurer’s advisers for addressing the concern of the Hon. J. H. Jobling and indicating that there will be two indexes, one for the confidential material and one for the non-confidential material. We understand that futures trading is a sensible part of an energy company’s normal day-to-day business; it is a part of the hedging process, and it has to be done. But our concern arises when it is not done properly, when it goes off the rails because people act as if they are participating in bonfire of the vanities.

If Integral Energy has not lost $80 million, the fact that we have been asking the same question in this House since May may have damaged its reputation. If the money was not lost and the question had been answered, my motion would not have been necessary. But because the question has not been answered we can only conclude that the money has been lost. If the money has been lost we want to know what sort of procedures have been put in place to prevent that happening again. I would have thought they were worthy aspirations for an Opposition in this State.

The original question to the Minister for Energy, Kim Yeadon, was answered in such a way that we were forced to act. If at any stage, even on that first day, the Minister had said, "No. That has not happened. You are silly. You are wrong," we would have had to stop. But we have not had a proper answer to any of our questions, and that is why we have had to continue down this path. This scenario could be relevant to any one of the energy utilities in this State. It is unfortunate for business in this State that we could not have our questions answered appropriately. I thank the honourable members who have indicated their support for the motion, and I commend it to the House.

Amendment agreed to.

Motion as amended agreed to.

Bill introduced and read a first time.

The Hon. J. S. TINGLE [4.39 p.m.]: I move:

That this bill be now read a second time.

There can be no doubt that there is urgent need for reform of the system of electing persons and parties to the Legislative Council. In saying that, I know I
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have the unstinted support of the Leader of the Government, whose zeal for reform of this House knows no bounds, and who has recently shown great inventiveness in a move to reform this Chamber. But it has been obvious to me since at least 1996, when I first gave notice of this bill, that the time is at hand when we need to make some changes.

One of the great weaknesses of the electoral system as I see it at present is that there is no barrier to how many parties one person, or one group of people, can set up. The Act requires inter alia, that, to be registered for a periodic election for this House, a party must convince the Electoral Commissioner that it has 200 bona fide members. But the problem is that any one group of 200 people can set up party after party - as many parties as they like - and it is quite clear to many of us that this is to a large degree precisely what happened in the election on 27 March this year; and to a lesser extent in the election in March 1995.

It seems very likely that what we saw in the last election was a massive campaign to "harvest" preferences through a network of interrelated small parties - at least some of those parties being "front"parties - all exchanging preferences, and ultimately reposing them in one or two parties that were behind the whole procedure. Without exhaustive investigations I am certainly not able to say exactly who set up what; but a brief study of the preference flows certainly suggests some likely directions.

On top of that, the unequal result - which saw parties with a handful of votes harvest preferences and succeed in having a candidate elected ahead of parties with many times their primary vote - shows that this intricate network of preference running has, in many cases, effectively disfranchised voters who supported the higher-scoring parties. There were parties with misleading titles, and parties that sounded like other major parties. This, together with an absurd and quite unmanageable ballot paper, led to huge confusion among voters. An example in case is my own party. Many of our supporters were confused by the sudden appearance, just before the election, of something called the Gunowners and Sporting Hunters Party. Nobody had ever heard of it, or knew what it was about, or who was behind it, or where it fitted into the shooting movement. And the fact is that it did not fit in at all.

At the Electoral Commission function to draw positions on the ballot paper, representatives of this front party openly boasted that it had been set up only to divert votes from the Shooters Party. Because it drew position "J" near the top of the ballot paper and the Shooters Party drew position "BZ" right down at the bottom of the ballot paper, many of our intending supporters scanned the paper, saw that party first, and voted for it in the belief, as they told us afterwards, that they were voting for us.

Approximately 25,000 people voted for the Gunowners Party - almost certainly by mistake - and their votes were consequently diverted away from us, and to other parties with which the Gunowners Party exchanged preferences. But I do not intend to dwell on past ambushes - except to point out that the same absurd situation applied in the recent local government elections. As an example, a candidate in Byron Bay who did not even vote for himself and received only one vote was elected to the council on preferences. The preferences came from his running mate. It was coolly explained afterwards that the two planned it that way by running a group ticket designed to do just that.

There are numerous similar examples in both the State and local government elections, and there is no point in tut-tutting about them now. Rather, I believe we have to look forward and bring some balance, proportion and common sense back into the electoral system as it affects this House. I do not believe that the type of change originally proposed by the Treasurer is the right way to go. The problem that arose last March is not related to how this House functions and is constituted. It stems from a loophole in the system of registering parties and the determination of some groups to quite destructively exploit that loophole, create confusion, mislead voters, and distort the outcome of the election.

The creation of a rash of microscopic parties that had no possibility or expectation of election was undertaken deliberately to fragment the vote of the major and non-major parties, in the clear knowledge that fewer people than ever were likely to vote for the major parties. That is precisely what happened. Because many people felt misled and because there was general and understandable anger at the size and unwieldiness of the ballot paper, there was a great excuse for some people and some media - who have no concept of the importance of this Chamber - to call for the Chamber itself to be emasculated. As I said earlier, it is not the make-up of this Chamber that needs reform: rather, the system of registration of parties - or, more particularly, the system of validating the bona fides of parties seeking registration - needs reform.

Although, as I say, I foresaw the possibility of the March 1999 debacle when I first gave notice of this bill in 1996, I certainly could not have foreseen the magnitude of the problem which developed, nor
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its catastrophic consequences for electoral democracy. I now believe we need one major and cathartic action to get the system of registration back into skew and to frustrate those who seek to unfairly exploit the system to suit their own ends.

We need a one-off change which will create a new approach to the registration of parties and make it much more difficult for people to create frivolous or mischievous "front parties". I believe that the bill I am now proposing will go a long way towards doing that. The main thrust of the bill is to prevent a group of people forming unlimited numbers of parties for the purpose of aggregating preferences. It also seeks to increase the number of members that a party must have to seek registration, and to make sure that that party retains at least that minimum number of members - to prove it is a viable party.

This bill is designed to raise the bar slightly; not in the dramatic way envisaged by the Treasurer, but just high enough so that bona fide small parties will still have every opportunity of accessing the Parliament, whereas the phoney "front" parties, which merely seek to exploit the electoral law, will be exposed and held back. My proposal is that this legislation will create a one-off change to the system of registration in time for the periodic election in 2003 and will apply to all upper House elections from then on.

The bill proposes that the Act will come into force on 1 January 2001 and require all parties now registered to apply to re-register under the new criteria by 31 January 2001 and set a new qualifying requirement for that one re-registration. The bill will amend the Parliamentary Electorates and Elections Act 1912 to increase, from 200 to 1,000, the number of members a party must have before it can apply for registration.

But there is an important rider to that figure. The Act will require that when a party seeks registration and provides the required 1,000 names, addresses and signatures of electors who are members of the party, the commissioner will have to satisfy himself that at least 75 per cent of the persons on that application have not appeared on any other successful application to register a political party in New South Wales in the past five years.

The purpose of this latter provision is to end the practice of multiple registration applications by one group of people. It allows that a small proportion - 25 per cent of those people - may have been involved with some other previous application. This recognises that some people might have supported the registration of a previous party but later became disillusioned or dissatisfied with that party.

This provision of the bill insists that 75 per cent of those names must be of party members who have not been involved in this process for the past five years. The purpose of specifying five years is to take the exclusive effect of this provision back beyond the four-year span between elections - that is, well beyond the last election. Let me make it clear that this provision does not prevent a person from being a member of more than one party, as some people have claimed. It applies only to people who lend their names to an application to register a party - and provides that they do not do that more than once every five years, if the application is successful.

Obviously, the specific purpose of this bill is to stop the one group of people - 200 under the old Act and 1,000 under my proposed Act - from setting up several parties at the one time, for the one election. The bill also provides that within one year after a periodic election, or at any other time the Electoral Commissioner may decide, a registered party must provide the names, addresses and signatures of at least 1,000 members to prove that it is still a viable and a bona fide party. If it cannot satisfy the commissioner as to this it will be liable to deregistration.

In another proposed and significant change the bill proposes that at the time of this mass reregistration a party already represented in Parliament would still have to produce the required number of names, as well as relying on its parliamentary representation, to ensure reregistration. This is to ensure that members of Parliament do, in fact, genuinely represent a viable party. The bill contains provisions that will make it apply to multiple applications for registration received before the commencement of the Act.

I will now deal with the bill in some detail. Items [1] to [3] of schedule 1 change the definition of "eligible party" in sections 66A, 66D and 66DA of the Parliamentary Electorates and Elections Act 1912. The number of members needed to secure registration of a party is altered from 200 to 1,000 - that is, a party must have at least 1,000 members to qualify for registration. Item [4] inserts new section 66DB, which contains two new subsections. In brief, the new section provides that the Electoral Commissioner shall investigate the application by, in part, checking to see whether any of the electors whose names appear on the application for registration have, in the past five years, had their
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names included on another application as a member of a party that was subsequently registered and that, immediately before this new application was made, were still registered. That is the core of the bill.

The thought behind that is that if a person is listed as supporting registration of a new party, while a party whose application they previously supported is still registered, then the possibility of party stacking might arise. This is the whole point of the bill. Item [5] of schedule 1 inserts after section 66G (1) new section 66G (1A). The new section provides that the commissioner, if he finds names on the new application which also appeared on another, must refuse to register the new party if, on counting those names, he finds that more than one-quarter of the members of the party appearing on the new application also had their names on another application any time in the past five years where that party was registered and remains registered.

Item [6] of schedule 1 inserts after section 66H new section 66HA. The new section requires that within one year after a periodic Legislative Council election, or at any other time the commissioner may require, the registered officer of a party must provide the names and addresses of at least 1,000 electors who are members of the party. Under the existing Act the registered officer could, alternately, provide the name and address of any member of Parliament who is a member of the party.

This bill provides that for the purpose of reregistering parties under the new Act, a party would not be able to rely only on the presence of a representative in Parliament but would also have to provide at least the required number of membership details. This would apply only for the purpose of reregistration when the new Act comes into force. Obviously parties which do not have a member in Parliament are not affected by this - it affects only parties that already have representation in Parliament.

If a party already registered and represented in Parliament fails to meet both requirements the Electoral Commissioner may cancel its registration. This is, obviously, to ensure that a party continues to have a reasonably substantial membership, which demonstrates that it is still representative. This bill is silent about the position of Independents, who do not, ostensibly at least, claim to represent a political party. I believe it is outside the scope of the purposes of this bill to try to deal with Independents, but I believe that their position needs to be examined. Item [7] of schedule 1 changes the required number of members from 200 to 1,000.

Item [8] of schedule 1 includes savings and transitional provisions that allow the impediments to registration provided by this bill to apply to persons with multiple party membership between the passing of the bill but before the commencement of the Act. It also allows the commissioner to refuse registration to a party that applied before the commencement of this Act, but whose registration was not finalised before the Act commenced, if that party could not meet the requirements of the bill. However, the commissioner could not cancel registration of a party that was registered immediately before the commencement of the amending Act until a period of 12 months after the commencing of the Act.

Schedule 2 to the bill breaks the nexus between the Parliamentary Electorates and Elections Act 1912 and the Local Government Act 1993. Breaking this nexus means that parties seeking to register for local government elections will still be required to provide the names, addresses and signatures of 100 members - they will not have to provide 1,000 names, as is required for Legislative Council elections. The simple purpose of the bill is to end the rorting of the registration and electoral system that we have seen in the last two elections for this Chamber, and which I believe has brought this Chamber and the system of registration into disrepute and contempt in the community.

The bill is designed to stop the creation of multiple parties by one small group of people and to ensure that only genuine, representative, substantive parties are able to have members elected to this House. I am aware that there is a great deal of discussion going on at present about the need for reform, but I repeat that it has got out of scope and is wrongly targeting the House, not the system of registration for election to the House.

There may very well be a large number of amendments to this bill. But bear in mind that the bill seeks to affect only the methods of registering a political party for elections to this House and does not attempt to change the system of electing candidates to the House in periodic elections. How members are elected is a separate question, and if that system needs to be changed it should be the subject of a separate bill. How parties are registered and how persons are elected to this House are two separate questions, and they need to be dealt with separately.

There are many possibilities. For instance, I know the Greens are advocating a new system of above-the-line preferences, which has merit. If this new system could be introduced without the referendum that would be necessary if a change to the Constitution were required I would probably support it. However, I believe that is a separate issue, outside the scope or intention of this bill.

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I believe this relatively simple change, which the Shooters Party is proposing, to the system of qualifying for registration as a party for an election will address and correct the great anomalies which produced the ludicrous position in the March election. We owe it to the electors of New South Wales to reduce the confusion they obviously faced on 27 March, which meant that many of them were unwittingly disenfranchised and directed their vote to places they did not want it to go. I do not pretend that this bill is perfect but, at the very least, it is a start.

I put it on the table, as a framework, a basis for reconstruction of the system, and I invite honourable members to consider whether they believe it is enough or whether it needs adjustment. It is a beginning for something we need to have in place well before the next election in 2003, and I hope it will get things moving. I stress that I have absolutely no idea of the level of support for the bill. I have not sought to canvass support. I hope the Government will support the bill because it does not argue with some of the proposals put forward originally by the Treasurer. I hope the Opposition will support the bill because it certainly does not in any way disadvantage either Coalition party.

I hope the crossbenchers will support the bill because it protects the access to Parliament of bona fide small parties without leaving in place the open slather for the so-called "minnows" - the unrepresentative, knee-jerk parties that infested the last election, blew the ballot paper out of all commonsense size, and angered and confused the electorate. We need to go back to the drawing board to create a system of registration of parties for election to this House that will overcome the tremendous disapproval expressed by the community during the last election. We owe it not just to the community but to ourselves to maintain the status and dignity of the House. This bill will go a long way to producing that result. I commend the bill to the House.

Debate adjourned on motion by Reverend the Hon. F. J. Nile.

Pursuant to sessional orders business interrupted. The House continued to sit.

The Hon. J. J. DELLA BOSCA (Special Minister of State, and Assistant Treasurer) [5.00 p.m.]: I wish to make a ministerial statement about the Government’s Drug Summit legislation. Honourable members will be aware that today I gave notice of the Government’s Drug Summit legislation, and the exposure draft of the bill was made available for members to review. The bill will provide for one - and one only - trial of a medically supervised injecting room in Kings Cross, subject to permission being granted by the Commissioner of Police and the Director-General of Health; additional bail conditions, with rehabilitation being an optional condition for bail; and the introduction of some measures to further control drug problems in some of our major institutions, in particular, to allow the introduction of drug sniffer dog teams to patrol in juvenile detention centres.

In respect of young offenders, we will be allowing minor drug offenders under the age of 18 to be dealt with under the Young Offenders Act - that is, youth conferencing - and some tougher powers in relation to a range of appropriate matters. This legislation is a small part of a comprehensive response to the Drug Summit. Most honourable members will recall that the Government announced a $93 million package as its response to the Drug Summit.

The spirit in which this legislation is being put before the House follows the spirit of the Drug Summit. Honourable members have widely different views about the way in which society and government should respond to the drug problem, but there is widespread support in the community for two fundamentals: that is, that drug dealers - those who profit from the illicit drug trade - must be caught and punished, and that drug addicts should be given the chance to break their habits and rehabilitate themselves. Within that $93 million package there is provision for a further 23,500 addicts to be treated and rehabilitated over the coming months and years.

With regard to the most contentious aspect of the legislation - that is, the provision of a medically supervised injecting room trial at Kings Cross - I emphasise that that proposal is a small part of a substantial package. There is consensus about the problem, about the urgency to deal with it and about the two core issues - the punishment of drug dealers and the rehabilitation of drug addicts. Within that consensus there is a view of a clear way forward. The Government has taken the view that it will introduce trials. One of those trials, one small part of the package, is this medically supervised injecting room proposal. I emphasise that the bill will provide a sunset clause. The medically supervised injecting room trial will cease after 18 months, and adequate mechanisms will be put in place for the assessment
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of that aspect of the Drug Summit response, the other measures envisaged in the legislation, and the administrative decisions made parallelling the legislation.

With regard to the injecting room trial, the Sisters of Charity Health Service is now discussing the location and operation of the centre with representatives of the local community. The New South Wales Police Service has produced guidelines which rule out any no-go areas outside the medically supervised injecting room, and police officers will continue their crackdown on drug dealers throughout the Kings Cross area and throughout the State. On a number of occasions at the beginning of the Drug Summit the Premier said that the Government would rather do nothing at all, as serious as the problem is, than do something to make the situation worse. That is why we have taken the approach we have.

We will institute a series of trials of compulsory treatment measures, of the injecting room, of youth conferencing for minor drug offences and of a range of approaches, the planning for which is already well advanced. I understand the leaders of other parties will be responding to this statement. I emphasise that the objective of putting this legislation in exposure draft form to members today and by giving it to the media, and therefore exposing it to the community, is designed to continue the Government’s approach.

We appreciate that there are still differences of opinion and that there is still controversy about the approach to these issues. We know members will want to go back to their constituencies, back to the public, and reconsider their positions. We have made sure the bill is available to parties and individual members well in advance of the debate that will be conducted in this place so we can continue the transparent and consultative approach that has been taken on this issue.

The Hon. M. J. GALLACHER (Leader of the Opposition) [5.08 p.m.]: The Opposition looks forward to the exposure draft bill being formally presented to each member of this Chamber - indeed, to each member of both Houses. It is important for honourable members to recognise from the outset that what we are being given will not necessarily be the final product. What we are being given could well be an ambit claim of certain issues and there could be some shifting one way or the other in respect of the matters raised in the bill. I would like to think that is the case and that there will be some opportunity for modification with regard to the exposure draft before it goes into its final form. If it does not - if there is no opportunity for consultation with all sides of the debate - the talk about consultation and negotiation is merely a farce.

We must be given an opportunity to consult and to effect changes to this bill before it is debated in this Chamber. I do not have a copy of the bill, which I know is available in the community, so I do not know its full implications. From listening to what the Minister said earlier, I would like to think that he would enter into debate on this bill with an open mind. The exposure draft bill should be open to negotiation and finetuning before it is debated in this Chamber.

The Minister raised a number of key aspects relating to the exposure draft bill. He referred to shooting galleries. The medical expression that is used to denote these galleries is "medically supervised safe injecting rooms". I am sure that that description is more palatable to the community. However, let us be honest. Debate concerning shooting galleries is like debate concerning the goods and services tax: no matter how many times we try to rename that tax the community knows it as the GST. We can do what we like but we should stick to its marketing name. The marketing name in relation to this issue is "shooting galleries". We must not try to dress it up by using medical terminology. "Shooting galleries" is the term to which the community is accustomed.

I place on the record at the outset the Opposition’s long-standing opposition to this shooting gallery trial. When this legislation is presented in this Chamber, the Opposition, like all other parties representing interest groups, will refer the matter to its constituents and debate the issue before finalising its position. It is worth placing on the record the Opposition’s long-held view that it is opposed to shooting galleries. The Minister made reference in his ministerial statement to the question of bail.

I hope that this legislation is not another vehicle through which bail will be watered down. People who are using drugs and who commit a crime might say, "The only reason I committed the crime is that I am addicted to drugs. I needed the money to supply my habit." When debate on this legislation finally occurs we do not want an acceptance of the fact that it will be used by those people as a vehicle through which to escape their responsibilities and their accountability to a court.

Bail provisions in this State must not be watered down. To use an expression used by the Minister, some measures are used to control drugs in juvenile centres. However, drug use at juvenile
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centres is out of control. I am sure that the Minister will concede that there are some terrible problems. The Minister and I both come from an area that is well-known for its drug problems.

I hope we will see a toughening up of the Government’s approach towards ensuring that drugs do not find their way into juvenile centres. We must not allow that to happen willy-nilly, which seems to be what is occurring right now. The Opposition is concerned about other aspects of this legislation. When the legislation finally comes before the House reference will be made to certain definitional aspects, for example, what constitutes a "minor drug offence". I hope that we will not see an expansion of the definition of "minor" by this Government.

I place on the record at the outset that the Government raised the drug issue prior to the State election. At the Drug Summit reference was made to the fact that the Government wanted to achieve a bipartisan approach to the drug issue. It is worthwhile noting that there has been no consultation, no negotiation and no discussion in regard to the presentation this afternoon of the exposure draft bill. I first found out about it - and it is not the fault of the Minister; there was probably just a glitch in the system - 15 minutes ago when I was told it would be presented in the Chamber. The Government has not acted in a spirit of bipartisanship. That is not what the community wants.

The community wants confirmation of the fact that the path down which we are travelling will be extensively traversed before the Parliament takes a final position on drugs. We look forward to this debate. We look forward to any piece of legislation that is serious about cracking down on drug dealers. Up until now we do not believe that this Government has been serious on this issue. The Minister referred to injecting rooms as being the most contentious aspect of the exposure draft bill. We are not just concerned about injecting rooms; we are keen to see much more negotiation. Is the Minister prepared to examine these issues and to capitulate to the views of the community rather than simply proceed with his own views?

Reverend the Hon. F. J. NILE [5.15 p.m.]: The Christian Democratic Party takes this opportunity to respond to the ministerial statement concerning the issuing of an exposure draft of the Drug Summit legislative response bill. I am pleased that the Government is giving us a period within which to consider this bill. However, the impending two-week parliamentary recess is too short.

If the Minister wants the bill to be dealt with on the first day that Parliament resumes and he wants the bill passed as quickly as possible, he will not obtain the support of all honourable members. We must have time within which to consider this piece of legislation. The Minister stated that the purpose of the bill is to establish medically supervised injecting centres. I agree with the Leader of the Opposition: the term that is used in the community - it is a term that people understand - is "heroin shooting galleries".

"Shooting galleries" is the term used by drug addicts and by people on the street. People know what we are talking about when we use that term. They might think that a "medically supervised injecting centre" is a naltrexone centre where people are given treatment to get off drugs. The two terms are very different. A rapid detoxification naltrexone centre is not what this Government is proposing to establish; it proposes to establish medically supervised injecting centres. The public might be confused; they might not be aware of the distinction; and they might wonder whether a shooting gallery and a medically supervised injecting centre are the same thing. There is a difference between the two descriptions. It is dangerous to use a term that is unclear and that can be misleading to the public.

On two occasions I have referred in this House to the United Nations International Narcotics Control Board and to its strong criticism of this proposal. I asked the Government whether it was responding to those criticisms. The Government’s response seems to be that it will just go ahead with its proposal. It has ignored the criticisms of an official, authoritative body - a body established by every nation in a co-operative effort in the war against drugs.

The Government appears to be ignoring the International Narcotics Control Board in the same way as it has ignored the Opposition. I do not believe that it has spent enough time in obtaining a bipartisan approach on this issue. We have learned in the past that, if we do not get that approach, we do not proceed very far. We saw that happening in relation to the Aboriginal issue, which the two parties turned into a political football, and the Aboriginal people suffered. In this case the Government is using the drug issue as a political football and the drug addicts, those who want to get off drugs, will suffer.

Who will be held responsible for the first overdose death at a shooting gallery? No matter what provisions are contained in the bill, people will feel obliged to sue someone over the death of their
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son or daughter in a government-sanctioned centre. I do not wish to be a wet blanket but I am aware of a death that occurred in the toilet at the Wayside Chapel shooting gallery. I am sure that similar incidents will occur in the shooting gallery's 18-month trial period. That will be a tragedy. As a result the powerful drug lobby in this State will tell the Government that it can prevent those drug overdose deaths simply by supplying to addicts the correct quality and quantity of heroin. That would be a persuasive argument - one which I will not accept - when a death occurs in a shooting gallery.

I warn the Government that it is now going down that pathway. The drug lobby has already stated that it believes heroin should be supplied to addicts: in other words, a drug trial should be part of the shooting gallery arrangements. Another area of concern is that the bill will repeal the Drug Offensive Act 1987. From my recollection that legislation was introduced by the Labor Government under Premier Barrie Unsworth, who was totally opposed to drugs. During his time as Premier he promoted a bipartisan approach on the drugs issue. It will be a pity if we lose the Drug Offensive Act because of the way the Government is moving on this matter. I am concerned about the impact of the repeal of that Act, the abolition of the New South Wales Drug Offensive Council, the abolition of the Drug Offensive Foundation, and the abolition of the Drug Offensive Foundation Fund.

Is this bill really a surrender bill? Is this the white flag? Are we saying we cannot beat the drug epidemic - that we are giving into it and are going to take this approach? There has been criticism of the use of the terms "offensive" and "war against drugs". It is not a war against drug addicts. It is a war and an offensive against drugs. We cannot give up on that battle. There must be a war. There must be a battle. In the interests of our youth and children we must win.

The Hon. R. S. L. JONES [5.21 p.m.], by leave: I have had the opportunity to read the proposed legislation quickly. It appears to be a timid response to the Drug Summit, which came up with strong recommendations, many of which were unanimous. There was the usual opposition from the hard-core conservatives, and from this draft exposure it would appear that the Government has bowed to them. The licensed supervised injecting room - or shooting gallery, as the Opposition prefers to call it, using New York slang - will operate for an 18-month trial period and will be strictly controlled.

The legislation allows one single licensed injecting room to operate, and that injecting room will be closed after the trial period unless the legislation is amended. During that time reports will be issued on its progress. I suspect that it will be set up to have little chance of success. However, if we do not try this method of saving lives we will never know whether it is possible to save those lives. We have to try it to know whether it works. If it does not work, then there will be no safe injecting rooms. I point out that according to the proposed legislation the Government will crack down on existing non-legal informal injecting rooms. Therefore, we might end up with far fewer injecting rooms than already exist. Lives are currently being saved through those informal injecting rooms.

We may end up with one licensed injecting room operating under strict control and no other injecting rooms. The legislation might cost more lives than it saves, but at least we will find out whether this single licensed injecting room, which presumably will be located in Kings Cross, where users congregate, will work. The bottom line is that we have to save as many lives as we can. If this will save lives, so be it. We are not promoting the use of heroin or any other drug that people inject, either amphetamines or cocaine. No government in its right mind would do that and certainly no-one in this Chamber would do that. However, we must acknowledge that some people will and do use drugs regardless of the laws.

While they continue to do so in defiance of the law, at least with this legislation we can hope to save lives in the meantime, bring them back into mainstream society and help them kick their habits, if they want to, and resume their place in society, perhaps as employed citizens. Many drug users are in a terrible state. Many drug addicts come from broken homes where they were abused as children. Some may have had an alcoholic father and a disturbed mother. They may have been rejected, and that is the reason they started taking drugs. These people are sons and daughters, sometimes from broken families, and they need to be looked after.

They are not all hard-core criminals. Unfortunately, with the present state of the law, they often rob people to obtain money to buy their drug supplies. The huge increase in the women’s prison population can be attributed to property crime by drug users. In the past 12 months the women’s prison population has increased by almost 50 per cent as a result of women taking drugs and not being able to pay for their habit. Many of them are single mothers and are being incarcerated. They are the fallouts from the drug problem.

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Alternative solutions to the drug problem must be considered. Around the world the war on drugs is being lost. Where legislation is hardest, the war being lost is worst. In places where the law is hardest, their are more casualties and higher rates of drug usage. Where the law is more compassionate towards these people, the problem is being reduced. Many countries in Europe are moving towards safe injecting rooms because they know they work; they are saving lives and getting people off drugs and back into the mainstream. Drug users are ordinary people who have a problem. We have to help them kick their drug problem by any means possible, and try to save their lives.

The Hon. I. COHEN [5.25 p.m.], by leave: I acknowledge that we are moving forward by trialling safe injecting rooms for drug users, although we are concerned about a number of aspects. The New South Wales Drug Summit, which was held in Parliament in May this year, brought together members of Parliament, community representatives, experts and professionals, those who inject drugs and families to find innovative approaches to address the impact of drugs in our community. The Drug Summit was a pivotal event in this Parliament and it was a sincere attempt to move forward on a number of issues that will have great import for the community to help save life and increase the quality of life of all involved.

It has been interesting to the hear some of the issues in this debate. This is an attempt to move towards the concept of medically supervised injecting rooms and away from the concept of shooting galleries. If Reverend the Hon. F. J. Nile is to attack and hold the Government responsible for any lives that may be lost through this proposal - from my experience with the safe injecting room inquiry, no lives were lost in those European establishments; in fact many were saved - I ask him to take responsibility for those lives lost in the gutters of this city at present. That is the present appalling state of affairs. This is an honest attempt, through the Drug Summit and subsequent moves by the Government, to redress this situation. Whilst many criticisms can be made, it is important that we take that into account.

A medically supervised injecting room will save lives by reducing overdose deaths. It will provide opportunities for referral to treatment services. It will facilitate safe needle disposal and support efforts to prevent the spread of HIV and hepatitis C. Australia has been at the forefront in preventing the spread of hepatitis C compared to the situation that occurred in Canada in recent years. Without treatment communicable and deadly diseases spread throughout a population. My experience with the safe injecting room inquiry clearly shows that this type of medically supervised facility will reach out to those who are most marginalised from health services and will provide a gateway to rehabilitation, treatment programs and other health services.

The facility will reduce the incidence of people injecting in public places and will provide a place for the safe disposal of injecting equipment. The injecting room will be medically supervised, and that will help to reduce the number of people injecting drugs. It will facilitate the safe disposal of injecting equipment, and the Greens believe it will increase the level of protection for the overall community. Considering the health of those who inject drugs, such forward steps by the Government will help maintain the health of drug users. We hear time and again that we need to keep these people alive until they can be rehabilitated. Rather than people mixing water from toilets and gutters with their drugs, they will be medically supervised.

It is important that we work towards an innovative and varied approach to the problem. It is important that the Government recognises the need to move away from punitive sanctions, particularly for first offenders and young people, for experimentation with drugs or for carrying non-traffickable amounts of drugs on their person. The drug problem should be regarded as a medical and community health problem, rather than a criminal problem. Parliament should approach positively the direction the community can take, and adopt a proactive rather than a reactive role. I and the Greens look forward to dealing proactively with the drug problem. We look forward to saving lives. We are uncomfortable with the lack of clarity about the role of police in these matters.

I am hopeful that we will develop a strategy that will be one of many, be it safe injecting rooms, or the ability to carry small amounts of illicit drugs for personal use without fear of criminal sanctions, that promotes a more humane attitude when dealing with prohibited drugs. I certainly am not talking about supporting drug dealers in the community, but, rather, about allowing drug users to carry sterile injecting equipment and use safe injecting rooms. We need to change community attitudes so that drug users can be helped. The result will be fewer deaths and, perhaps, a better and more humane understanding of those who are trapped in the vicious cycle of drug addiction.

Ms LEE RHIANNON [5.31 p.m.]: I seek leave to respond to the ministerial statement.

Leave not granted.

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The Hon. J. J. DELLA BOSCA (Special Minister of State, and Assistant Treasurer) [5.32 p.m.]: I table the exposure draft bill.

The Hon. J. J. DELLA BOSCA (Special Minister of State, and Assistant Treasurer), on behalf of the Hon. M. R. Egan [5.32 p.m.]: I move:

That this bill be now read a second time.

I believe the bill enjoys the favour of all members of the House. I seek leave to have the second reading speech incorporated in Hansard.

Leave granted.

The Anzac Memorial building in Hyde Park is one of the most significant structures in the City of Sydney. It is of tremendous significance to all the people of this country who have been touched by war. It is the major building in this State dedicated to the memory of those who have served their country in war. While taking its name from the forces comprising the Australia and New Zealand Army Corp who landed at Gallipoli, the Anzac Memorial was originally dedicated to all of the forces involved in World War I. Anzac Day has come to be the focus for our acknowledgment of the debt we owe to all of the men and women who have suffered in all of the wars that have involved our citizens.

In a similar way, the Anzac Memorial building has come to be dedicated to all servicemen and servicewomen in the conflicts that have involved our nation since that time. On 30 November 1984, the fiftieth anniversary of the original dedication of the memorial building, the Anzac Memorial was formally rededicated as a memorial to all Australians who served their country in war. Section 8C of the Anzac Memorial (Building) Act, added in 1984, authorised the dedication of the memorial as the principal State war memorial. The Anzac Memorial building is a precious and powerful symbol in our national life. Fittingly, it is located as the central axis for Hyde Park south. Dedication of the site for a war memorial took place by notification in the Government Gazette of 9 January 1931. The building was made possible by extensive public appeals that commenced in 1916. In 1923, Parliament enacted the Anzac Memorial (Building) Act which established a trust to administer the funds that had been raised.

The Act also charged the trustees with the erection of the memorial building and with the care, management and maintenance of the building and the site upon which it is erected. For this reason, the Act contains the power for the making of by-laws for the protection of the building and the dedicated site. When originally enacted, section 9 of the Act imposed a limit of £20 ($40) as the maximum penalty for a breach of the by-laws. This was increased in 1987 to $200. By-Law 12 under the Act makes it an offence to damage the memorial building or any part of the dedicated area. The current maximum penalty available for a breach of this by-law is $40.

As honourable members will be aware, the memorial building was damaged earlier this year as a result of a serious graffiti attack. There have been other incidents of damage to the memorial and inappropriate behaviour on the dedicated area. The Government has responded by providing funds for improved security of the memorial. In addition, the Government is bringing forward this bill to increase the penalties available under the Act for vandalism of the memorial. These penalties are in line with the maximum penalties available under the Summary Offences Act. The bill proposes three amendments. It amends section 9 (3) to increase the maximum penalty that may be imposed for a breach of a by-law from $200, set in 1987, to 20 penalty units, currently $2,200.

It increases the maximum penalty that can be awarded for a breach of by-law 12 relating to damage to the memorial to 20 penalty units; it increases the maximum penalty for other offences under the current by-laws to 10 penalty units; and a new provision, section 11, is inserted to enable a Local Court to order a person who has been convicted of an offence under the by-laws to pay compensation for damage caused by the commission of the offence, up to a maximum limit of 20 penalty units. The proposed increase in penalties and provision for the payment of compensation for damage to the memorial will send a clear message to the community that attacks on the Anzac Memorial building will not be tolerated. I commend the bill to the House.

The Hon. M. J. GALLACHER (Leader of the Opposition) [5.33 p.m.]: It is with great pleasure that I lead on behalf of the Opposition in support of the bill. Even though it has widespread support, a number of matters need to be teased out in the course of its passage through this House. The bill is designed to increase the penalties imposed on those who criminally damage the Anzac Memorial located in Hyde Park, and to provide Local Courts with the necessary powers to order any person convicted of such malicious damage to pay the costs in full or part thereof of the repair or restoration of damage caused by that person’s criminal conduct. It is a growing trend in our community for some people to use graffiti as their means of gaining status among their peers, irrespective of the damage or personal grief they cause in the process.

For some of these offenders, who like to refer to themselves as "artists", status comes about by saturating a well-utilised area to ensure maximum promotion. Others elect to tag a site of high risk, and seek to achieve recognition by raising the degree of difficulty in doing so. Such sites would include the tagging of the exterior of a train while the train was mobile, or the tagging of bridges or walkways, necessitating the offenders putting themselves at some risk. Another type of tagging is damaging property with a high-risk value, that is a high risk of being caught, such as a police station or other well-patronised public areas. Current legislation endeavours to target this form of criminal activity, but in maintaining its tradition in fighting crime the Government relies purely on passing laws
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thereby creating offences while, at the same time, immediately wiping its hands and saying, "We have fixed that problem. We have done that. What is next?"

The Carr Government will be remembered as one that passed a number of laws thereby creating new offences, without seeking to put in place the mechanisms by which the laws could be enforced effectively. The bill, which the Opposition fully supports, will fall exactly the same way as other legislation has fallen under this Government’s mismanagement of the New South Wales Police Service. Police in this State can be given all the legislative power in the world to make an arrest, but if they do not have the resources to do the job it is all a waste of time. The bill will increase the maximum penalty available for persons convicted of damaging the Anzac Memorial from $200 to $2,200 or, as it is referred to in the bill, up to a maximum of 20 penalty points.

Unless the Government is prepared to give the Police Service the resources to get on with the job of enforcing this law, the penalty will be ineffectual. The legislation will not work on its own. The people who are committing these sorts of offences do not differentiate between the penalties, whether it be a slap on the wrist or a gaol offence. If they realise it is fairly unlikely that they will be arrested as result of committing this offence they will pay no heed to the applicable penalty. Time and again we have heard from the Government about record budgets and record police numbers, but the figures do not add up. People do not feel any safer in the community. In the past couple of days, if not yesterday, a car-jacking occurred at Roselands in western Sydney. We heard some discussion about it today in the lower House.

Another incident of concern is the recent vicious assault on, and possibly robbery of, a member of Parliament that took place only a short distance from the front steps of this House. In fact, it was only a relatively short distance from the Anzac Memorial. At the same time, there is growing concern in the community, not visible by this Government for all intents and purposes, from social welfare organisations about a person or persons who have murdered a number of vagrants within a relatively short distance from the very same war memorial. The modus operandi is the same in all the murders. Death has occurred as a result of head injuries. But, once again, the resources are not there to enforce the laws. We are talking about the murder of vagrants.

The Hon. J. J. Della Bosca: Homeless people.

The Hon. M. J. GALLACHER: Homeless people, in terms of their lifestyle, that is correct. I am talking about serious assaults on members of Parliament. I am not trying to draw any relationship between those offences. I hear an interjection from the side, "What has it got to do with the war memorial?" The fact is that these sorts of offences are occurring within walking distance of the war memorial. Can any honourable member tell me how a simple increase in penalties for defacing the war memorial will somehow bring about a change in people’s attitudes and ensure that they will not deface the war memorial, when serious criminal offences are taking place in that very same area and are not being concluded in terms of an investigative process?

Significant criminal incidents are occurring in the area around the war memorial. The Opposition believes that the simple act of passing this legislation will not be the catalyst by which defacing the war memorial will cease. Members of this House should call upon the Government and the Leader of the Government in this House to take a message to the Minister for Police to relieve police officers of their responsibility of flying a desk, which has been the result of the unprecedented impact of this Government on the Police Service. Police officers should be brought back into the community to protect members of the community and public property. That is exactly what we are discussing in considering the provisions of this bill.

I have had considerable experience dealing with people who commit graffiti crime. As I said earlier, most graffiti criminals use their actions as a means by which to achieve status with their peers. This bill endeavours to prosecute the actions of another type of graffiti artist. Some members of the community do not seek status; rather, they seek to create public anger or, indeed, community grief as a result of their actions. Nowhere is that more evident than in attacks in recent years upon historic buildings and memorials - such as the Anzac Memorial - and, indeed, the Cenotaph.

The symbolism of the Anzac Memorial is a lasting legacy of the price paid by previous generations of Australians and New Zealanders for the protection of our liberty. Those soldiers protected not only our lives but also the lives of people from other nations. The Hon. B. P. V. Pezzutti and the Hon. C. J. S. Lynn will describe the memorial’s significance to them as members of the armed services and what it means to others who are presently or have been in the past closely associated with the armed forces. I will not deal with that aspect in great detail now, other than to say that I look forward to their descriptions of what the Anzac
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Memorial, the Cenotaph and other memorials throughout the nation mean to them, and the net effect of graffiti not only on people who are associated with the armed forces but also people in the wider community.

The reality is that some people in the community damage monuments such as the Anzac Memorial to draw attention to their own political or sectional views. As well, they are people who, for personal reasons, elect to destroy public property for no better reason than the achievement of notoriety and to cause as much pain as possible in the process. Unfortunately, the Government’s action with the passage of this bill will be purely reactionary because the criminal act must already have been performed before the proposed legislation comes into operation.

This bill contains no preventive provisions. I noticed discussion that took place in another place about glass walls being erected around the memorial at night to stop graffiti. If that suggestion is accepted, all it will do in my view, based on my experience in dealing with many people who elect to conduct themselves in a particular way, is increase the degree of difficulty in performing the task. It will create a challenge for those who wish to participate in graffiti to again seek status from their peers to surmount the barriers and damage the memorial.

I agree fully with the recommendation of the Leader of the Opposition in another place that in addition to an increased penalty, some effective and respectful preventive measures should be devised. The suggestion made by my leader in the other place was to put a permanent guard on duty during hours of darkness. I believe a guard would serve a number of very important purposes and would be worthwhile for the memorial. The guards would serve to protect the memorial and also indicate to the wider community that remembering those who gave their lives during the wars is not simply a matter of building a place of remembrance: It also requires a significant monument to be put in place to show that we will stand guard over those who gave their lives while standing guard over us.

Beyond the direct impact that a guard would have on providing protection for the Anzac Memorial, a guard would also establish a safe zone surrounding the memorial at night. I do not know how many members of this House have taken the opportunity to observe the memorial at night, when it has a most significant emotional impact. The memorial is set against the backdrop of a pool, with the park and darkness behind it and the forecourt lights shining onto it. It is far more compelling at night than it is during the day. The reality is, however, that most Sydneysiders and most tourists would stay away from that area at night.

Approximately two years ago a senior commissioned police officer was very seriously bashed a short distance from the memorial after leaving police headquarters. He had to travel only a short distance to public transport before heading for home. The uniformed commissioned officer was walking across town. If a police officer cannot protect himself, how can honourable members send a message to the community that we are serious about protecting the Anzac Memorial by simply increasing the penalty for damaging it from $200 to $2,200?

A guard would serve as a very important living symbol of the role performed by people who lost their lives guarding this country while defending Australia’s sovereignty overseas and protecting the lives of others. It would send a very clear message to offenders and to the community that members of this Parliament are very serious about maintaining the memorial in a symbolic and physical sense. That level of protection would also provide an opportunity for tourists and the people of Australia to visit the memorial at night instead of taking their sandwiches and feeding the pigeons at lunch time before returning to their workplaces.

The Opposition supports the Government’s move to ensure that those who desecrate the memorial should pay for the pain and suffering that they have caused others. Following the disgraceful attacked that occurred in February, the Government has finally focused its attention on this issue. I call upon the Minister to put in place a lasting method of protection that addresses the issues I have raised. If the Government is serious about preventing these crimes it should take a long hard look at the way in which Australian history is being presented in school curricula. I am sure that the Hon. C. J. S. Lynn will describe the way in which the New South Wales curriculum readily identifies with past deeds of other nations which are seen to be the great protectors of the world, whereas the Australian soldier is ignored. Honourable members are in for a bit of a history lesson.

I call upon all honourable members to listen attentively to the Hon. C. J. S. Lynn and the Hon. B. P. V. Pezzutti when they make their contributions to this debate. In conclusion, let me state that the Opposition supports the bill. I reiterate that I look forward to the contributions of members of the Opposition and to the Minister’s reply. I hope that
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he will have something positive to say about providing a permanent guard for the memorial to engender respect and ensure that the people of Sydney feel safe visiting the memorial at any hour of the day, not only Monday to Friday between 8.00 a.m. and 4.00 p.m.

Reverend the Hon. F. J. NILE [5.50 p.m.]: The Christian Democratic Party is pleased to support the Anzac Memorial (Building) Amendment Bill. The objects of the bill are to amend the Anzac Memorial (Building) Act 1923 and the Anzac Memorial (Building) By-laws 1937 to increase the penalties for offences under those by-laws and to enable a Local Court to order a person who has been convicted of an offence under those by-laws to pay the cost of, or a contribution to the cost of, the repair or restoration of damage caused by the commission of the offence. I am concerned about how to educate youths on the sacred nature of not only the Anzac Memorial in Hyde Park but other memorials throughout the State that have also been damaged by graffiti.

The Parliamentary Library has informed me that memorials have been damaged at Corrimal in the Illawarra area and at Waverley - almost as if a concerted attack has been waged on war memorials across the State. That is a matter of great regret and the Government must take action. The Premier, who is also the Minister for Citizenship, has responsibility for the Anzac Memorial and Anzac Bridge. The Premier has focused on the importance of our history and society and I encourage him to continue in a positive direction in conjunction with the Federal Government to protect war memorials. As the Leader of the Opposition said, it is dangerous to walk through Hyde Park at night; indeed, the police have advised people not to do that. Therefore the Anzac Memorial, which is in Hyde Park, is vulnerable to attack.

Young people should be made aware of the importance of war memorials. I urge the Premier to discuss with the Federal Government the possibility of introducing a ceremonial guard on the Anzac Memorial in Hyde Park; to involve the Australian defence forces as a guard of honour. That would impress upon everyone, including our youth, the importance of this sacred site and the fact that it ought be treated with respect.

I have visited the United States of America’s Arizona Memorial in Pearl Harbour, which has a ceremonial guard, and other memorials in France, Poland, Russia, and China which have service guards. In Sydney the Army, Navy and Air Force could provide a ceremonial guard on a daily rotation basis. I agree with the Leader of the Opposition that security police would be required at night, and that could be supplied by the Police Service or private security guards.

I encourage the Government to consider putting tour guides at the memorial. Ex-servicemen wearing their medals could attend the memorial as tour guides and explain its significance and tell about their own service in defending Australia. Schoolchildren who visit Parliament House, especially those who come down from the country, could also visit the Anzac Memorial. The interesting instruction they would be given by former servicemen would implant in the schoolchildren a proper respect for the memorial.

Some years ago the defence forces conducted a ceremonial parade and guard in Martin Place every Thursday afternoon. Perhaps it was stopped because of renovations being carried out there. If it were recommenced, that ceremonial activity could be held in conjunction with a ceremony in Hyde Park, perhaps with a military band, on either a Thursday afternoon or Sunday. This would help to emphasise the importance of the Anzac Memorial and the Cenotaph. I am pleased to support the bill.

The Hon. Dr B. P. V. PEZZUTTI [5.55 p.m.]: I represent the Leader of the Opposition on the Anzac Memorial Trust, which meets regularly. The co-operation that the trustees have received from the Premier and the Department of Public Works in the important matter of protecting the memorial, its refurbishment and proper maintenance has been extraordinary.

The Premier has shown a personal interest in the memorial, as demonstrated by his extremely good second reading speech. Of course, he usually gets a bit carried away, gets a bit arrogant, and says a few wrong things, but his speech clearly demonstrates his knowledge of history and his deep commitment to protecting, refurbishing and promoting this memorial. This matter has been raised tonight because graffiti removal is a continuing problem. The annual report of the trustees of the Anzac Memorial Building for the year ended 31 December 1998 was tabled in this Parliament. The annual report states:

Following the defacing of the Memorial by extensive graffiti and the removal of this graffiti, there was concern over the patchy appearance of the exterior of the building.

As I say, maintenance and protection of the memorial is an ongoing problem. The provision of security gates that do not restrict access is another problem to be resolved. The trustees were presented
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with a number of options, which they widely discussed. The option they chose was a vertical lift screen; not a cheap option. It has been designed by an architect and the Public Works Department, and they have done an outstanding job in arriving at a solution that is sympathetic with the need to protect the memorial while not detracting from it. The Premier has allocated $1 million in this year’s budget for that work to proceed. Tenders have been let and the tendering process finalised. The money is there for the trustees to spend.

Reverend the Hon. F. J. Nile will be pleased to know that the Premier has made $133,000 available for night-time security guards from 1 July this year, and that $105,000 was allocated to the trustees for other refurbishment work to make the downstairs section useable. The annual report tells us what happened when the security guard and dog were engaged:

Concern about increasing instances of anti-social behaviour within the Memorial precincts, particularly during the hours of darkness, caused the Trustees to ask the Government for assistance. Gates are to be installed to restrict out-of-hours access to the podium levels and the project has now been given high priority.

Since that annual report was written those initiatives have been funded. The report goes on:

A security company has been appointed by the Trustees to secure the Memorial precinct.

The manager has reported that as a result of these guard and dog patrols, between 16 March and 17 April there was a 75 per cent reduction in attacks on the war memorial. During that period guards removed more than 1,000 people from the memorial. So, 1,000 people were inappropriately traipsing through the memorial at night. To underscore the importance of the memorial, some 5,000 people visited the memorial on Anzac Day. There is a need for guards because the problem is antisocial behaviour. It is not just graffiti; people sleep and defecate in the memorial, and more recently there was a boy from Coogee who did not know his way around the city and relieved himself on the war memorial.

I raise some matters for the Minister to take into account. This legislation may need to be extended to cover other important war memorials. The Jesse Street Memorial Park in Loftus Street is the site of an ex-service women’s war memorial. During demonstrations by groups opposed to the mining of Kakadu that park was trashed, fires were lit on the surrounds, and the statue was damaged.

I remember the Hon. Beryl Evans being terribly concerned about it. She took the Lord Mayor and a representative of the Premier’s Department to the park. They kicked everybody out of the park because they had damaged it. The park and the statue were restored and, since then, each time groups have begun to demonstrate in or near that park it has been roped off. The park and the memorial are looking extraordinarily good and they are a fitting memorial to the women who served us in all wars.

I raise that issue because it is clear from the debate in the other House that war memorials right across the State are regularly damaged. This legislation should apply to all war memorials. I urge the Minister to take that matter back to the Premier and I think he would give it a fairly decent hearing as he is interested in our history. He has always accepted the need for proper recognition and thanks to those who served their country, whether in war or in peace time.

I recently opened the refurbished memorial baths in Lismore, which are a copy of the Menen Gate. They were refurbished and rededicated with a grant from the State and Commonwealth governments and some money from the local council. It is a fitting war memorial but it has already been vandalised with graffiti, and the money to fix it must come from local government.

A fund should be established to assist with the maintenance of memorials. Perhaps local government should set aside its own money for that. The penalties for defacing memorials should be the same, whether it is the war memorial in Hyde Park in Sydney or other memorials throughout New South Wales. I entirely approve of the bill and I think all members of this House and the other place approve of it also. I hope the President takes a particular interest in this bill and adds her voice to its support.

The Hon. H. S. TSANG [6.05 p.m.]: I support the Government’s legislation. It will increase the penalties for vandalism of the Anzac Memorial building in Hyde Park. This bill brings the penalty for vandalising this historic house into line with the penalties under the Summary Offences Act. Currently, the maximum penalty under the by-law for desecrating this building is only £20, while the penalty under the Summary Offences Act for spray paint damage is 20 penalty points, or $2,200.

Clearly, with inflation this anomaly has increased significantly since the 1923 Act and now the penalty simply does not deter desecration of this
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national shrine. Moreover, the Summary Offences Act contains a provision enabling the courts to order a person convicted of criminal damage to contribute towards the cost of repairing the damage. I support this. In doing so, I support the preservation of our Anzac tradition and endorse community concern regarding the recent vandalism of this most precious site.

Only two days ago in the Local Court there was an example of the type of offence this legislation is intended to crack down on. The magistrate imposed the highest possible penalty at his disposal under the Anzac Memorial by-law, only $40, on a young man who urinated on Sydney’s most sacred monument. This is absurd because, under the Summary Offences Act, if the same person had urinated into the adjacent reflection pool, he would have faced a penalty of three months gaol or a fine of $600. We must not allow this situation to continue. Parliament must take a stand.

Standing up for the Anzac tradition and for those who have made sacrifices for the country is not a first for me. I have given my time to lead marches on issues I felt passionate about. I led a march against racism when Pauline Hanson and One Nation tried to threaten our national standing and unleashed a tidal wave of racism across the nation.

As you have, Madam President, some 10 years ago I led a march against the massacre of innocent students fighting for democracy. I am proud of my long and enduring relationship with the Returned Services League of Australia, and each Anzac Day I am proud to march with the State President of the RSL, Mr Rusty Priest, the state executive and those who laid their lives on the line to preserve our way of life.

Nothing is more precious to our society than these people and their sacrifices, and nothing is more abhorrent to any society than the desecration of buildings designed to honour their contribution. So, when I, like many others, read about the recent graffiti attack I was shocked and saddened. I support this legislation because I want these people to know that we still care, we still remember and we still honour. We will not stand by and allow the memorial to their contribution to be denigrated or vandalised.

This bill will bring the penalties for those who desecrate the shrine into line with those in the Summary Offences legislation, which operates in all other areas. In this sense, the legislation corrects an anomaly. Offenders should not receive stiffer fines for vandalising public property of no real community significance than they do for vandalising this most sacred historic building. This anomaly is clearly out of line with community sentiment. It is a slap in the face for those who have served their country. It is clearly out of line with the growing trend for Australians, particularly young Australians, to get involved and to take pride in their past.

As we move towards a republic I sense a resurgence of interest in the Anzac tradition. For me the Anzac tradition symbolises so much of what an Australian republic is about. It is about standing up for one’s beliefs and one’s commitment to Australia. It is about standing as friends with, and yet independent of, mother England with a mature and distinct national identity. It is also about having courage. It is because of the sacrifice made by these men and women for the sake of their country that we live today in a free, open and tolerant society. We have much to be proud of, and much to be thankful for.

I can only speak from anecdotal evidence, but I strongly believe that as we move towards a republic there will be increasing interest in preserving our Anzac traditions. That is why these changes have received so much support from the general community. I believe the changes will strengthen the bond between the general community and those who fought for our way of life. As an honorary life member of the RSL and a board member of the Anzac Trust, I commend the bill to the House.

The Hon. M. I. JONES [6.11 p.m.]: I speak in favour of the Anzac Memorial (Building) Amendment Bill. Recently, mindless acts of desecration have made such legislation necessary. Yet it is sad that as a community we need to legislate for the protection of a site that represents such a strong, vital part of our culture and society. As an adopted citizen of this country I, like many other new Australians, have embraced this country’s heritage and traditions.

Although the Anzac tradition was born on distant shores on 25 April 1915, ever since that time its measure has been shaped by the sacrifice and commitment made by the men and women of Australia’s defence forces. Even today in East Timor the inheritors of this tradition seek to ensure peace and stability within our region. Each one of these men and women embodies the qualities which the historian C. E. W. Bean so carefully described. He said:

But ANZAC stood, and still stands, for reckless valour in a good cause, for enterprise, resourcefulness, fidelity, comradeship, and endurance that will never own defeat.

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The Anzac Memorial is a symbol of our collective heritage, which we share as Australians - just as our commemoration of that day is also a symbol of our national identity. Its purpose is to commemorate Australians who gave the ultimate sacrifice: their life for their country. As a community we must respect and admire the sacrifice and qualities that our defence forces embody. Defacement of our Anzac Memorial is an injury to their honour and service, which they gave selflessly.

The function of memorials is not as a monument for war glories, but, rather, a focus for remembrance. They form a crucial function in the healing process associated with the loss of loved ones and comrades in war. From a personal perspective, I recall as a child standing by my father at the Royal Navy’s memorial at Portsmouth whilst he traced the names of mates who had not returned. I have similarly witnessed the grief of Vietnam veterans at the Memorial Wall in Washington DC. The defacement or desecration of these monuments is a crime - a crime of ignorance and cruelty which is inflicted on those who are left to grieve.

This memorial also has a place in the history and consciousness of our city. The Anzac Memorial is what the people of Sydney, and particularly the generation that was most affected by the First World War wanted: a symbol that represented their memories and grief. The building itself took many years from its inception to become a reality. In 1929 the Parliament agreed to construct the memorial at its present location at the southern end of Hyde Park. A competition was commissioned throughout Australia and the British Empire to design a suitable commemorative model that would reflect both the aspirations of Sydney’s citizens and their desire to remember those who had fallen in the First World War.

In July 1930 the design of a young Sydney architect, C. Bruce Dellit, was chosen over 100 other entries. The design was very different to the classic-style memorials that were built throughout Australia at that time. His design was uniquely modernist, embracing the new architectural form of that period, art deco. It represented the feeling that Sydney’s memorial would be as much about looking towards the future as remembering the past. The architect Dellit commented that he had sought to create a memorial that would seek "to outlast any drab depression which might arise out of personal grief for the fallen".

The sculpture of "Sacrifice" by Raynor Hoff reflected the artist’s personal experience of war and his desire not to romanticise or glorify the experience shared by all veterans. Professor Ken Inglis in his text "Sacred Places" describes the sculpture as portraying "not glory but passivity". Above the sculpture the ceiling of the memorial’s dome is inscribed with 120,000 gold stars, each representing a volunteer from New South Wales. Commentators such as the English Art-Historian have described both the memorial and the sculpture of "Sacrifice" as achieving a remarkable dignity of expression, while Denis Jeans describes the "remarkable unity of architecture, carving and sculpture". In supporting this bill I am reminded of the words of the Australian writer A. B. Facey, who wrote:

It was the nineteenth day of August 1915. I had been on Gallipoli only six days short of four months and I want to say now that they were the worst four months of my whole life. I had seen many men die horribly, and had killed many myself, and lived in fear most of the time. And it is terrible to think that it was all for nothing.

The Hon. C. J. S. LYNN [6.17 p.m.]: The Anzac Memorial in Hyde Park was completed in 1934. War memorials are probably more significant to Australians than to many other nations because of our historical involvement in theatres of war. The graves of our dead are located in foreign lands, and these are symbolised by the erection of war memorials. The word "cenotaph", meaning "empty tomb", was often used to describe these memorials. Our war memorials stand in place of our distant graves, and Anzac Day ceremonies around them each year provide a surrogate funeral. They our sacred sites.

These memorials have been treated with great reverence since they were erected because of the powerful symbolism that they evoke. I recall the first instance of desecration of our Anzac Memorial in Hyde Park. It was Anzac Day in 1981 when a mob left-wing feminists from the hairy-armpit brigade gathered under the label "Women Against Rape" and mocked our old veterans by jumping into the Pool of Remembrance and carrying on with other publicity-seeking shenanigans.

Last year we were outraged to see that a graffiti vandal had carried out an attack on the memorial, and yesterday we learned that a young bloke had been caught urinating against it. The Government’s response has been to introduce legislation to protect the memorial against such attacks.

In his second reading speech in another place the Premier advised that it is appropriate to protect the Anzac Memorial because of "the importance of the memorial in our history, in our understanding of
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the Australian experience and the Australian character". So what is this "character" he wants us to understand? I refer to historian Lloyd Robson for a description of the typical Australian Anzac soldier as he saw it. Lloyd Robson wrote:

These men reflected the egalitarian colonial origins of Australia and were direct and straightforward in their dealings with each other, and contemptuous of lesser breeds; they could and did fight like threshing machines when they had to . . . They showed up all other soldiers and especially the British to be lacking in initiative and go; they revealed that they were rather undisciplined when that discipline was merely a formality, but really needed no controlling when it came to the deadly business of battle - then they became highly effective, skilful and feared killers, they were a classless army; they stuck to their mates through thick and thin; their burden as soldiers was lightened by a sardonic sense of humour . . . And in their ranks abounded many wags and tough nuts who made it a rule always to outwit the authorities; they did not give a damn for anyone on earth, in heaven or in hell. Their highly distinctive tunics and hats were perhaps never cleaned and brushed as they might have been . . . they had a penchant for removing objects of value left in their way and were expert con men; their contempt for "Gyppos" was notorious; though they at first hated the Turks . . . very soon they developed a respect for Johnny Turk; their attitude to the German soldier was not one of hate but respect . . . The stereotypic Australian soldier was very tall and sinewy and hatchet-faced. He had a great respect for the institutions of the "old country" and what he perceived as its quaintness, but little time for pommy officers and men as a rule, or until they proved themselves manly. He got on well with the Scots. The stereotype was not formally religious but had a lot of time for the Salvation Army and some of the "fighting" padres.

That description is still relevant if a letter to the editor in the Australian the day before yesterday is any guide. Frank Browne of Canungra wrote:

I’ve been watching with amusement while the Indonesians threaten to harm Australian soldiers.

I happen to know that while the Indonesian military looks smart in their uniforms and are real tough with defenceless people, when it comes to a fair dinkum blue they are seriously deficient in ticker. One unarmed Australian girl is worth a hundred of them.

They are trying to scare the people who won the Boer War for the Poms, showed them how to win the First World War (inventing blitzkrieg at the same time) then showed the world how to beat it at Tobruk in the Second World War.

The fact of the matter is, we’ve flogged every race on the planet who has ever fought us.

We’d rather be their mates, but if the Indonesians want a blue, they should start with someone easy, like the Europeans, Russians, Yanks or Poms.

I think that spirit is still evident in the Australian Digger, the Anzac. The Premier stated:

Graffiti attacks on such a place are totally inexplicable. Some people in our society are totally alienated from it, its aspirations and its history.

I believe the Premier is spot on about that. I recall an article published a few years ago in the Australian titled "Youth and the Challenge of Change". It reported:

Nothing prepared us for the depth of the children’s fear of the future, their despair.

The cultural decay of Western societies is evident from an array of social trends - the increase in youth suicide; the high, and perhaps still increasing, incidence of serious drug and alcohol abuse; the sharp rise in crime rates in recent decades; the increasing incidence of mental illness such as depression; the emergence as mass personal obsessions, such as dieting among adolescent girls; the widespread pessimism cynicism, confusion, social alienation and sense of insecurity and powerlessness revealed by surveys.

The article went on to say:

When a culture fails to imbue people’s lives with a sense of worth and meaning then they must attempt to find these qualities as individuals. It is a task that many find extremely difficult, even impossible. People want to know what is expected of them; they need to have something to believe in. This absence of belief is much beyond ourselves, and the subsequent lack of faith in ourselves are undermining our resilience, our capacity to cope with the more personal difficulties and hardships of everyday life.

It may be, then, that the greatest wrong we are doing to our children is not the fractured families or the scarcity of jobs (damaging though these are), but the creation of a culture that gives them nothing beyond themselves to believe in, and no cause for help or optimism.

In a Sun-Herald article of 20 April 1997 the grandchildren of Sir Roden Cutler, VC, were interviewed for their views on Anzac. Tim, then aged 16, advised that at his school, Shore, the head prefect read the Anzac ode, For The Fallen. He said:

The Last Post is played and hymns are sung. There is also a minute’s silence and we have a few prayers. Grandparents are invited and some of them get quite emotional. But I can’t understand why anyone would cry.

None of the three Cutler children had ever been to an Anzac Day ceremony, and on this one Ben was playing golf, Sarah was meeting friends, and Tim was going water-skiing. Premier Carr has claimed:

In a modest way I would like to think that our initiatives in the school system to underline the study of our history - the new compulsory history unit leading up to year 10, examinable at the end of year 10, that new cluster of external exams we have inserted at the end of year 10 - and the protection of World War 1 as the central part of the study of modern history will counter this.

I have to take issue with the Premier on his assertion that the study of World War I "remains the centre of Australia’s modern history studies and is
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the most important event in this century". I remind the Premier that World War I was not our war. Australia was not much more than a colonial outpost or a British appendage when it entered the war to make its contribution to empire defence. It was not until the landing at Gallipoli that the Anzac tradition was born. Indeed, some modern historians regard that action as the baptism of Australia as a nation. I agree with the Premier that this should be a compulsory part of our educational curriculum, but it is only the beginning.

Names such as Tobruk, El Alamein and Beersheba have become etched into our national psyche. Our initial involvement in World War II was also due to our links with Great Britain. Once again the leadership and the fighting qualities of our troops were the stuff of legend. But it was not until Japan entered the war on 7 December 1941 that the Australian national spirit was put to the test as Australia faced the very real and immediate threat of invasion. The Japanese army was awesome in every respect. It had advanced unchecked down through Asia and the Pacific. It had defeated the Americans in the Philippines, the British and the Australian forces, many of which were under incompetent British command, in Singapore and Malaya, and the Dutch in the Dutch East Indies.

The Japanese army met a ragtag bunch of Australians in New Guinea. The Australians were outgunned, out-trained and outnumbered, but during July and December 1942 they absorbed everything the superior Japanese force could throw at them in some of the most horrific jungle terrain in the world. They pushed the Australians back to the very doorstep of their objective at Port Moresby, but the Australians rallied and then pushed the Japanese forces back across the Owen Stanley Ranges and into the sea at Buna and Gona. It was a heroic campaign and one that saved Australia from invasion. Sir William Slim of Burma, later to become our Governor-General, remarked that it was the Australians who first broke the spell of invincibility of the Japanese. If Gallipoli was our baptism as a nation, then Kokoda was our confirmation. The terrible tragedy is that nobody, especially young Australians, knows anything about it.

I have said many times that Australians know more about the Alamo than they do about Isurava, yet the odds that the Australians faced at Isurava were greater than the odds that the Texans faced at the Alamo. This ignorance is surely an indictment of our education system. If the Premier is serious about changing Australian attitudes so that they become more respectful of our traditions, he needs to do more than make cosmetic adjustments to our education system. He also needs to seek a commitment from the media and arts community to produce the films on Australian campaigns to create a wider public interest in our history, to produce the documentaries for factual research, and to write the books that tell the stories.

I remember a few years ago the ABC spent a couple of million dollars of taxpayers’ funds to produce a film called Turtle Beach. This film achieved some sort of notoriety because it managed to offend the Malaysians but, as a show, it simply did not rate. The funds should have been directed towards the production of a film on any number of Australian military campaigns. I appreciate that this is more a Federal issue. However, the Premier should seek to work closely with the Federal Government given his commitment to historical studies.

More recently the 2/14 Battalion sought funds from the Federal Department of Veterans’ Affairs to have a book written about the battle of Isurava. Its request was refused because the battle was deemed not to be of national significance by this new breed of bureaucrats. Never mind that the military historian at the Australian National University, Dr David Horner, has referred to it as the battle that saved Australia and never mind that the 2/14 Battalion was the most highly decorated unit in the Australian army during the Second World War.

More recently a freelance documentary team under the leadership of Patrick Lindsay produced a moving documentary on the return of a group of veterans to the Isurava battle site. This documentary was their own initiative and was produced at their own expense but it was rejected by the ABC as an Anzac Day special because, according to Mr Geoff Barnes, the commissioning editor for ABC documentaries, "It did not fit our scheduling requirements", so it was screened nationally on Channel 10.

Yet Mr Barnes found that it was appropriate to screen a documentary on General Douglas MacArthur of the United States Army around the same time, a general who denigrated the Australian troops in New Guinea so that he could promote his own personal ambitions. Mr Barnes should feel ashamed of his decision but if he is a product of the post-Vietnam education system, his ignorance can be excused simply because he would not have learned of the significance of this battle during his formative years.

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The Leader of the Opposition in the other place spoke of her deep commitment to the Kokoda campaign as a result of her experience in trekking across the Owen Stanley Ranges and visiting battle sites along the track in 1997. She also spoke of her involvement in accompanying a group of 46 Kokoda veterans on their return to the battle site at Isurava for the last parade. Another person who accompanied this group was the son of a Kokoda veteran, Peter Dorman. This experience enabled Peter to understand his father much better. In his book The Silent Men he wrote:

For myself, "The Silent Men" (who fought in the Kokoda campaign) are silent no more. I understand now the reason for their perceived silence, for their reluctance to talk of the indescribable slaughter they have experienced and the acts of nihilistic savagery they have witnessed. I understand how their comradeship and strong commitments to each other - an inbuilt support system that renders full credence and authority to the treasured Australian icon of mateship. Through these men, I have also come to know my father. I have come to appreciate the silent burden that war placed on his and their shoulders. In the process, I have also come to know myself intimately as I place myself beside him, scrambling and fighting over the stony hills of Lebanon, then stumbling through the mud and jungle of the Owen Stanleys. I lie beside him in the putrid, stinking trenches and beaches of Gona, warding off disease as much as the enemy. Deep wells of grief and love flood me as I put my arms around him, as I would my children, and attempt to shield him from the surrounding horrors, then assist him to stagger out of the holocaust.

Peter Dorman went on to write:

As the men bid farewell to the brothers and mates who didn’t come home, I feel a stronger bonding with them after years of pain, examination and conciliation. I pray this Last Parade can release these Silent Men. I will not forget their sacrifice.

The Leader of the Opposition said, "Nor should we." She went on to say that all members of Parliament should be committed to making sure that the generation that follows us, the one that follows it, and the one that follows it, understand the commitment of the people who fought in campaigns such as Kokoda. This can only be achieved with a genuine plan to introduce a study of our military history into our school curriculum as a compulsory subject. I also note that the Government’s solution to the graffiti attacks on the Anzac War Memorial at Hyde Park is to install a wall, which will be raised to protect the memorial at night. That does not seem to me to be an imaginative solution. I am sure that the architects will provide a design solution, the builders will do a good job, and that it will be an expensive project. It would be worthwhile if it was the only solution to the problem, but it is not.

The Leader of the Opposition proposed an imaginative solution which I believe has a great deal of merit and should be seriously considered by the Government. She has suggested that an Anzac memorial guard, similar to the highly successful shrine guard in Melbourne, be employed for ceremonial and protective duties. The shrine guard in Melbourne was introduced in 1935, has a strength of 10 guards and operates on an annual budget of around $1.2 million a year. From 7.00 a.m. until sunset in winter, shrine guard officers dress in traditional Army light horse uniform and carry .303 rifles. In summer daylight hours they wear a more contemporary uniform, complete with plume hat. At night they wear police uniforms and are fully kitted with a baton, a pistol, spray and a police radio.

We understand that the Government is already proposing to have some guards at the memorial. However, we are proposing that the Anzac memorial guards will patrol the memorial and its surrounds 24 hours a day and fulfil ceremonial as well as protective functions. The ceremonial presence of uniformed guards would be an added tourist feature for Sydney. Members of the memorial guard could be special constables with former police and military service experience. Input on the project would have to be sought from the Trust, which currently manages the memorial, from the Returned Services League and the New South Wales police.

The Opposition suggests that the Government consider the proposal as a serious option to provide better protection for the Anzac memorial. I note that the Government supported the proposal of the Leader of the Opposition but the argument in support of its response was a little incoherent and, if anything, supported the call by the Leader of the Opposition for studies on Australian campaigns in World War II to be included in our education curriculum.

Mr Ian McManus, a Parliamentary Secretary in the other place, said that he would urge the Premier to write to John Howard immediately to request the provision of a military guard as provided for at Victoria Barracks. The problem is that the Government should be aware that the military guard at Victoria Barracks was contracted out to private security firms about five years ago. I thought that Mr McManus’s suggestion that we show movie shorts in picture theatres to remind our youth of our involvement in military conflicts was a step back into the 1950s and it indicates to me that the Government has not really thought the issue through. It seems as though the issue was flicked to the Government Architect to design a physical barrier to solve the problem.

I hope that the Government will now see that there is a more imaginative solution, which will not
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only provide the necessary security for the Anzac War Memorial but will give us an added tourist attraction which honours the sacrifices that have been made by Australian service men and women in defence of the peace and prosperity that we enjoy in this country and this State today. I am not really concerned with the punitive measures contained in the bill. A fair dinkum commitment to the study of Australian military history as part of our education curriculum and a strategic plan to encourage the production of films, documentaries and books will nurture a positive community attitude of respect towards such symbolic structures as our Cenotaph and our Anzac War Memorial. I urge the Premier to take these ideas and suggestions into account.

The Hon. Dr A. CHESTERFIELD-EVANS [6.35 p.m.]: The Australian Democrats support the Anzac Memorial (Building) Amendment Bill and the Anzac tradition. I was pleased to hear the Hon. C. J. S. Lynn refer to the Anzac legend and to some of the exploits of the Anzacs. My grandfather fought at the battle of Passchendaele - I think it is officially known as the third battle of Ypres - and he was one of three who survived of a company of 120. My father was in university at the time of the Second World War and he did not go overseas. The Australian Democrats are supportive of both the Anzac legend and the shrines which embody it and form part of our ceremonial remembrances and our history.

At a practical level, however, this bill is more about increasing the penalties to be imposed on anyone damaging the memorial, assisting in preventing damage to the memorial, or addressing the motivation of those who seek to damage it. Are we to demand compensation from those who damage the memorial? Who is to pay that compensation? Do these demoralised children who try to gain the respect of their peers by defacing things have the assets to make a significant contribution?

If children from disturbed families are involved in acts of graffiti would it really be helpful to demand that their parents - perhaps struggling single parents - make restitution, thus pushing the parents deeper into a worsening environment from which the children might have been trying to escape? The objective of this bill - which is to protect an Australian shrine - does not necessarily translate into a civilised and sensible way of punishing those who have defiled such a shrine.

We must maintain Australian traditions and remember that the Anzacs and our armies fought to achieve a much better world. The Leader of the Opposition made reference to the young psyche. He seems to understand the reason why children are indulging in graffiti. They want to achieve respect for their derring-do or daring, which in another context would be applauded as bravery, but in this context is condemned as mindless vandalism. The Hon. C. J. S. Lynn referred earlier to the fact that these children need to be able to believe in a system and a society. Those sorts of values are an extremely important touchstone for everyone in our community.

The bill removes the anomaly of the penalty for damaging a shrine being less than for other property damage, but apart from that I am not sure it advances the cause of remembrance. The Diggers who fought in the battles were high-spirited youths with positive values. I remember hearing anecdotal stories of young fellows from across the State waving goodbye to their loved ones as they left to enlist for the First World War, pinching toilet paper and hanging it out of the train windows to flap in the breeze. It was all in good fun. Perhaps we should think about the type of Australia we want rather than punishing those who would damage our icons.

Naturally the Democrats support the Anzac spirit and other important values in our society. However, we are facing a crisis in which the weak are being ground down, to some extent by world forces. That is occurring because our commitment to equity in the provision of a decent life for all Australians has not been maintained. We must address that problem and not simply look at jingoism or protecting our icons as ends in themselves.

The Democrats support the amendment proposed by the Hon. A. G. Corbett which seeks restitution from those who have damaged or defaced a monument. We support suggestions to prevent further damage to that monument, and ways to increase pride in our history and the furthering of the Anzac legend.

The Hon. R. S. L. JONES [6.42 p.m.]: There are very many sacred sites in Australia, and the Anzac Memorial is one of them. Hence the need for this legislation. I can understand people getting upset when the memorial is defaced. I share their concerns. On radio a couple of mornings ago one Digger phoned up and said, "But the person only got fined $40 for urinating on it." I said, "I will fix that." And the legislation does that. Any person urinating on the memorial will receive 10 penalty points. I support the bill. I am pleased that the Government has moved quickly to ensure that
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people who deface or abuse this monument in any way will be treated appropriately.

The Hon. I. COHEN [6.43 p.m.]: I support the spirit of the bill. However, I have grave concerns about achieving the purpose of the bill and doing it in a way that is of benefit to the community overall. I respect the memorial and appreciate how much it means to so many people in this country. However, imposing heavier penalties is the wrong way to approach the problem. A previous speaker said that erecting glass walls around the memorial would increase the challenge. We are dealing, particularly in the case of graffitists, with young people who like a challenge and who oppose all forms of authority - and this memorial represents one form of that authority. Rather than trying to penalise these people or create barriers that will not work, guards could patrol the area as a preventative measure. That would be preferable to just increasing the penalties, because the young people who commit these acts do not respect these icons.

Many people regard the work of street graffitists as vandalism, and certainly it creates considerable problems within the community. However, many graffitists are just a step away from being constructive artists. The Hon. C. J. S. Lynn may well laugh, even though I had the courtesy to listen quietly to what he said about this important issue. I have just as much respect for and interest in protecting these buildings but the legislation goes the wrong way about it. Some local councils give their local graffitists walls and public spaces on which to do their artwork. Some graffitists have started companies and become successful. They have grown out of the phase. There is a reason why they are doing it. We should try to solve the problem rather than just being reactive.

The Hon. C. J. S. Lynn: What if they did it to Ayers Rock?

The Hon. I. COHEN: I would say the same thing: look at why they have done it, and work out ways to prevent it. I feel very strongly about the many icons, albeit natural environments, that I see being desecrated. It is the same principle and I respect that principle. All I am saying is that graffitists, when caught, should undertake community work. Otherwise they will be caught up in the justice system and will face relatively heavy fines, which will be counterproductive in the long run and exacerbate their feelings of rebellion. Of course, such measures would not protect war memorials and the like. Prevention is clearly the name of the game.

One speaker mentioned $133,000 being put aside for night security guards. Certainly a guard with a dog would be an effective preventative measure. As a Green I am not against implementing preventative measures but it should be done in an appropriate and effective way. I support the amendment foreshadowed by the Hon. A. G. Corbett because we must get this right. The memorial should be given the respect it deserves because of the special place it has in the hearts of many people in this country. However, the legislation would better serve those who wish to protect the memorial if it were pro-active rather than enabling punitive attacks on those in our community who are at times rebellious.

The Hon. J. S. TINGLE [6.48 p.m.]: I did not intend to speak in this debate but I shall do so because I am concerned at some of the propositions put forward about the bill. I support the bill. The Hon. I. Cohen said that prevention is the name of the game. In this case I do not think it is. I think protection is the name of the game. It will take a long time to change the culture that believes graffiti and vandalism are somehow acceptable in the name of boredom and rejection of society. Until we can go down the path and create effective prevention, we have to have protection. This bill is about protecting one of the most sacred institutions in this country, sacred not in a religious sense but in a historic sense. It has made us the nation we are today.

The possibility that children are bored, reject society or are rebels provides no justification for acts committed on the Anzac Memorial or on the War Memorial in Canberra. Some children behave in an appalling manner and have to be asked not to skip, run, chew gum or wear their hats in the shrine of remembrance. These kids do not understand. We have lost the plot. In 1964 and 1965 I had the privilege of co-producing a series on ABC television called The First Anzacs. That was a two-year intensive education program for me looking into the history of the Anzacs and viewing films. I came away with a feeling of amazement at what these young men and women accomplished.

The important thing is that the kids who are now being accused of doing this damage are the same age as those who went to war, fought at Gallipoli and became the first Anzacs. There were endless instances of kids who were 14 years of age putting up their age so they could enlist. A relative of mine aged 14 years enlisted in the Light Horse Brigade and was in the charge at Beersheba, one of the most incredible events of World War I.

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The difference is that those kids had respect for institutions. They did not have the diversions that kids of today have: television, radio and fun things. The kids who went to war had to make their own entertainment and occupy themselves. Then they went away and fought a war. I intended to support the amendment of the Hon. A. G. Corbett, but having listened to the debate I now believe the amendment will create two classes of vandal: the vandal who would pay the full fine and the vandal who would be expected to repair the damage done to the Anzac Memorial, whether or not he has the skill to do it.

The memorial is a special place. It has sandstone blocks as part of its structure and is not easy to repair. I do not believe the amendment is the answer. The Hon. I. Cohen said that the imposition of heavier penalties is not the way to go. I remind honourable members that the first Anzacs paid the supreme penalty. Those soldiers were no older than the kids of today that we are speaking about. Trampling our monument to the Anzacs is a social condemnation of the way today’s kids react to these monuments and of the fact that we never taught them exactly where their history lies and why they enjoy the society they do. I suppose it is summed up in the words of the World War I poet who said:

Life to be sure is nothing much to give, but young men think it is and we were young.

Ms LEE RHIANNON [6.51 p.m.]: The Anzac Memorial (Building) Amendment Bill will fail to protect the Anzac Memorial. The Greens oppose this bill precisely because we are committed to working out strategies to provide effective protection.

The Hon. C. J. S. Lynn: That is not what your leader said when he spoke.

Ms LEE RHIANNON: Yes, he did. As our position on this issue is too often distorted, I emphasise that the Greens are strongly committed to the protection of the Anzac Memorial, and other war memorials and sites of significance. We are committed also to providing young people with space so they can express themselves. I urge members to consider those two points if the problem is to be solved. The Greens acknowledge the special place the memorial has in the history of this country. It holds great meaning for Australians and so it is appropriate for governments to develop strategies to safeguard it and other memorials.

The bill does not provide strategies; it just takes the old law-and-order approach. Time and again we have learned that that approach does not solve problems; it only fills up our gaols. This proposed legislation is set up to fail. Increasing fines for acts of vandalism on this war memorial will not deter graffiti artists. It will simply make criminals of more people, who, in the main, will be young people. As I have already said, the bill offers no protection to the war memorial. I shall explain why. The rationale behind the bill is that the fines should be increased in line with those in the Summary Offences Act.

Therefore, one who did not know much about Sydney would assume that if the Summary Offences Act was put in place our problems will be solved: there would be no graffiti on the war memorial! When members walk or catch taxis home tonight they will see graffiti somewhere. I doubt that anyone will go anywhere in Sydney without seeing graffiti. Clearly, the Summary Offences Act is not working to stop graffiti across this city. Similarly, it will not work to protect the Anzac Memorial.

[Interruption]

The Hon. C. J. S. Lynn stopped interjecting when the Hon. I. Cohen spoke, and I congratulate him on doing that. But he ripped into me last night. A number of members apologised to me for the behaviour of others towards me last night. One actually said it was sexist behaviour. This place is like a dormitory at a boys boarding school! I replied to those interjections, but all that is happening here is that double standards are being applied in the way some members treat others.

The Summary Offences Act is not stopping graffiti in this city. If people care about the war memorial, and I believe everyone in this place does, we should work together to produce some strategies to overcome the problem. The bill is the result of flawed logic. I understand that it is difficult for some members in this place to accept that graffiti is art, but it is the artistic expression of many young people. If we continue to deny that, we will continue to see graffiti on the war memorials of this country. All people, wherever their artistic pleasures lie, have a right to express and enjoy their art. Clearly, graffiti and tags are legitimate forms of art; they are not vandalism.

The Hon. D. F. Moppett: We are just levelling the penalties with those that apply elsewhere.

Ms LEE RHIANNON: Exactly, but it is not working. Members should pause and think: it is not working. We need to ensure that this art form is displayed in appropriate places, not in places of
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significance. Graffiti on our buildings, transport vehicles and monuments distresses many people, and it is time the Government came up with a real strategy. If this bill is passed the Anzac Memorial will not be protected; we will only have more legislation that makes criminals of young people.

Because the Greens position is so often distorted I emphasise that we understand that graffiti artists should not display their skills on buildings and other places. As a society we need to provide spaces for graffiti artists to display their skills. We should all work on that strategy to ensure the protection of these sites. The only way to safeguard the war memorial is to provide walls in specific places for taggers and graffiti artists to use, such as Hyde Park, Darling Harbour, Redfern and other suburbs. We have our art galleries and members have their clubs and other places to go to. These days young people have so few places to go to that it is not too much to ask that they also have somewhere to express themselves.

The Hon. J. J. Della Bosca: That is true.

Ms LEE RHIANNON: I thank the Minister for his interjection. To confine graffiti to appropriate places we need strategies that accommodate graffiti artists and encourage diversion. The Greens believe that the memorial is tremendously important to the people of New South Wales. The Government should introduce legislation that incorporates real strategies to confine graffiti to appropriate places. The bill is a poor attempt to respond to a real community concern. Increasing the level of financial penalty will not and does not stop graffiti. We welcome the amendment of the Hon. A. G. Corbett, as it provides a solution. We have all been talking about the Anzacs and the Anzac Memorial. The Anzacs fought for Australia. Australia’s future is its young people. Let us do the right thing by them.

The Hon. Dr P. WONG [6.58 p.m.]: I support the Anzac Memorial (Building) Amendment Bill, which aims to protect the Anzac Memorial in Hyde Park by prescribing higher penalties for desecration of the site and the memorial. The bill brings the Anzac Memorial Act into line with the Summary Offences Act, which prescribes 20 penalty units, which is currently $2,200, for vandalism offences. It is unfortunate that the memorial has been subjected to a number of graffiti and other attacks in the past.

As the principal war memorial in New South Wales the Anzac Memorial stands as a proud reminder of our past and as a symbol of our nation. Australia’s war history has an important place in its national image. The Anzac spirit has assumed a pivotal place in our national character. It illustrates the friendship, courage and teamwork characteristics that make our Australian spirit. It is important that in our national history we treasure our memorials, as well as their meaning. The bill is an important message in citizenship as promoted by the new citizenship portfolio. The proposed legislation is an encouragement of citizenship and an affirmation of our democratic rights and responsibilities.

Recently the Premier has become very keen on promoting citizenship. Although I dispute the merit of a number of decisions he has made in his role as Minister for Citizenship, I fully support this bill as a statement on Australian citizenship. The message the bill sends to the community is that we must protect the values of freedom and friendship, as well as our heritage. The legislation also sends out the message that vandalism and disrespect must not be tolerated in any way in our society. Recent desecration of the Anzac Memorial was met with much dismay and outrage within the community. The response was so strong because it was a desecration of a very important national symbol, rather than other buildings and walls that are painted with graffiti on a daily basis.

It is very important that we acknowledge these problems in the community and that we work together with young people to create preventive solutions rather than punitive ones. Education is a crucial preventive measure against disrespect. I am pleased that the Government is addressing the issue by making the study of World War I a compulsory subject on the secondary school syllabus. History does not teach us only of the nation building process of our own country; it is also about other cultures and other countries. It teaches us to recognise and respect differences, to acknowledge the positive and the negative from our past, and to develop ways to build on the positive and redress the negative.

That is a very important educative step by the Government, and I believe it will enhance the sense of national community and will promote the principles of multiculturalism. I believe the history of a country needs to be balanced. As much as we uphold the spirit of Anzacs at war, we also remember those who fought for peace. The bill is for all those who have lost their lives, such as our missionaries who died for the underprivileged and persecuted overseas and, indeed, our peacekeeping troops in East Timor. That gives a complete picture of Australia and its people. On that basis I give my full support to the bill.

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The Hon. J. F. RYAN [7.01 p.m.]: One cannot participate in this sort of debate without acknowledging the enormous sacrifice made by those for whom the war memorial stands. If it were not for their sacrifice we would not be here, exercising our rights to speak freely. Had it not been for their sacrifice the penalties faced by those who desecrate war memorials may have been more severe and other than financial. Other countries, some of which we have fought against, take a much more severe view than Australians of this sort of crime. One claim that has been made in the debate that cannot be left uncontradicted is that recent vandalism of the war memorial is art. In no way can it be described as such.

There is a difference between art and what happened to the war memorial. What occurred recently at the war memorial was not art but an act of violence. It was an act of people trying to express in the most revolting way possible their total disdain and scorn for what the war memorial represents. I believe they intended to hurt the feelings of those who hold it precious. In no way could that sort of activity be called art. It would be entirely different if those who desecrated the war memorial had drawn their own picture of a war memorial and scribbled slogans all over it.

I accept that graffiti is a form of art. I accept that some people who commit paint graffiti are attempting to be artists. But let us are not kid ourselves. What occurred recently at the war memorial had absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with art; it was an act of violence. My next comment in no way belittles the crime of domestic violence, but to suggest that what occurred at the war memorial was art is like trying to portray domestic violence in the home as sport.

One can define and redefine something to the point where it has no meaning. What was done at the war memorial was intended to be offensive. It was an act that showed no concern for the feelings people have for the war memorial. It was an act of violence, and it was a crime. People are not criminalised by the criminal justice system; they are criminalised because they commit a criminal offence. I would be one of the first in this House to stand up for merciful treatment for young people who misunderstand what they are doing. I think it was my colleague the Hon. C. J. S. Lynn who commented that some of the students at Shore do not understand what the war memorial represents. It may well be that whoever vandalised the war memorial did so because they did not know how insensitive their actions were.

If that is the case it is very sad. It is an understandable human dynamic that, over time, some of the meaning of Anzac has somehow or other been lost, but I hope we might restore that meaning. The Anzac commemoration has values that will apply to the community for time immemorial. I accept that young people may misunderstand its relevance. I can even accept that the amendment to be moved by the Hon. A. G. Corbett has the good intention of ensuring that a bad act does not become worse. In many respects the amendment simply restates the law. Under the current law it is possible for children who damage public property to be ordered by a court to restore the damage. Community service orders still exist for adults. The amendment is not a mile away from the existing law.

If the amendment is an attempt to give some legitimacy to the act that occurred at the war memorial, then it must be opposed utterly. I believe I speak on behalf of many members in this House when I say we must draw that distinction. I accept it is important not only to punish people, but to teach them. If we teach them properly it is not always necessary to punish them. If it were possible for the Diggers, for whom the memorial stands, to observe the debate tonight and express their point of view I am sure the last thing they would want is to have the young people punished. Many of the World War I and World War II Diggers whom I have come to know do not wish to talk about their experiences. It was a private sacrifice and they have private memories. They tend not to become overwrought by people who express any sort of unkind or negative feeling about their actions.

The last thing the Diggers would want is revenge on people who desecrate the war memorial. The war memorial represents important community values. Every member of this House has acknowledged those values. The last thing I can accept is that the desecration of the war memorial was, in any way, an act of art. Another lesson we could draw from the people who fought at Anzac Cove, or in any other war, is the way they accepted orders without question.

I am the last to say that we should not teach people not to do things. But there are some things that should not need to be taught; the message should be obvious straightaway. It is important for young people to understand that. For example, you do not get a second chance if you put your finger in an electric socket. Sometimes young people need a strong message. Our society needs to develop the attitude, if we do not already have it, that some
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things simply are not questioned. Knowing that one should not desecrate the war memorial should be beyond question. I support the bill.

The Hon. A. G. CORBETT [7.08 p.m.]: Like everyone here, I respect the memorial and would not want to see it defaced or damaged in any way. People who spray paint their tags or signatures, or in other ways deface public buildings, are often young, unemployed, marginalised, alienated people from mainstream society, and sometimes they are homeless. This vulnerable group of young people are least able to pay a fine in the order of $2,200, which the bill proposes as a maximum penalty for spraying graffiti on the memorial. Such a heavy fine is not likely to provide a deterrent as the bill intends, but will land young people with a fine they are not able to pay and perhaps even encourage them to commit further crime to obtain the funds to pay off the debt.

The severity of the amendment to section 3 of the Act is of great concern. The maximum penalty of 20 penalty units, or $2,200, is five times the penalty for damaging a shrine, monument or statue, the penalty for which is set at $440 under section 8 of the Summary Offences Act 1988. The effect of the amendment is to suggest that the memorial is five times more valuable than is a shrine that the Catholic Church may hold in high regard, or a monument or statue of the Unknown Soldier.

My point is that I do not believe that increasing a penalty is necessarily the right way to go. Ms Lee Rhiannon pointed out that merely increasing a penalty will not stop something from occurring. It might reduce the incidence of offences of this type if people who think about it, but for many young people, the amendment will not have that effect. Young people my spray-paint their tags or write graffiti for many reasons. One reason is that young people, in common with others in society, need to have structures and symbols with which they can identify and which they can recognise as representing themselves, just as many who have either served their country during wartime or whose loved ones served during wartime respect and identify with the memorial.

Marginalised and alienated young people do not have the structures and symbols that are represented in mainstream society. As a consequence, some of them will seek to stamp their identity on buildings that are situated in the areas that they frequent. That may include buildings that many other people hold dear to their hearts as symbolic of the respect for those who were killed during wars or in bygone generations.

One member of the Opposition suggested that young people may not be aware of what they are doing. The last thing that a young person who is already in a great deal of pain would think about is what the building represents to someone else, because they are consumed by the agony that is inside them. As I stated earlier, I am not excusing what they do. I am trying to understand their motivation; I am trying to step into their shoes to find out why they do these things and to try to prevent them from occurring in the future.

While I acknowledge the appropriate respect that many people in our society hold for war memorials and other shrines, those who are marginalised and alienated are not likely to respond with the same degree of respect. Unfortunately, there is a lack of places in Sydney for young people and, I daresay, children to legally play or do their own thing such as write graffiti tags and produce other so-called art in public spaces. For that reason I ask the Government to seriously consider providing appropriate locations and facilities in public places for young people to perform their graffiti art and create an example of the structure or symbol which they recognise as their own.

It is essential for the New South Wales Government to recognise the need for a range of alternatives to the excessively punitive measures that may only serve to encourage the commission of further crimes. I urge honourable members to consider this matter logically. Members of Parliament are supposed to be intelligent people. If the only solution we can come up with is to increase the fine or to make the penalties more punitive, we are not using our intelligence.

I urge honourable members to think creatively and to come up with some wiser options. Members of Parliament are supposed to be clever, but are we wise? The principles of restorative justice already underpin the juvenile justice conferencing system under which young people are able to address the harm caused to victims of crime rather than be fined or incarcerated in a juvenile justice prison. For that reason I propose an amendment to provide an alternative for the courts which embodies the principle of restorative justice.

The Hon. J. J. DELLA BOSCA (Special Minister of State, and Assistant Treasurer) [7.13 p.m.], in reply: This has been a long debate on an important matter. I had intended to speak very briefly in reply, and I will still try to do so, but because a number of different points have been made, I should respond in some detail to some of
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the contributions made during the debate. I begin by first observing that my personal experience is quite different from that outlined by the Leader of the Opposition. I cannot remember the exact month, but it was about two years ago when I was the victim of an armed assault by some young people in College Street.

The Hon. M. J. Gallacher: You weren’t out with Peter Black, were you?

The Hon. J. J. DELLA BOSCA: No, I was not. Like me, he was then a private citizen. At that time, I was minding my own business walking down College Street at approximately 10.30 in the evening when I was attacked by what turned out to be very young people whose ages ranged from 12 or 13 to a person in his early twenties who happened to be armed with a very substantial looking knife. I had not noticed it until quite late in the proceedings of the assault. I quickly used my wits.

The Hon. M. J. Gallacher: And ran.

The Hon. J. J. DELLA BOSCA: No. I did not have the confidence that my legs would carry me fast enough, so I waited for the traffic lights to turn green as I could see a passing taxi and, when the taxi came, I ran into the middle of the road and jumped into it. I called the local police patrol and, I am pleased to say, the offenders were apprehended within 20 minutes. I believe that reflects well on the New South Wales Police Service.

I am happy to report that even if it is only through personal narrative, my experience of the response capacity of law enforcement authorities in that precinct of the city is that it is pretty handy indeed. The Leader of the Opposition has raised a number of matters that are gravely serious. He has described the problems facing law enforcement officers who are dealing with that area of the city and neighbouring areas. However, it seems to me that not all is totally dark in that area.

I turn from the law enforcement issue which I regard as a minor part of the legislation before the House to what I believe are the more substantive issues, albeit not matters that would necessarily preoccupy honourable members during the normal course of the business of this House. Because the Leader of the Opposition takes a very strong interest in books that I read or do not read, acknowledge or do not acknowledge, I preface my remarks by saying that a short time ago I read a fantastic book by W. H. Downing titled To the Last Ridge. I am not aware whether other honourable members have read it, but if it had been published in the 1920s, it would have been the Australian equivalent of The Good Soldier Svejk and his Fortunes in the World War or All Quiet on the Western Front. It is a classic narrative account of an Australian digger at the European front during the period 1915 to 1917.

I will recount a great anecdote from that book because it may well sum up the middle ground between the differing views on our great Australian military heritage. I will recount my favourite anecdote from the book by paraphrasing from memory. A small unit of Australian soldiers were confronted with a major German counterattack after an assault by allied troops. During the course of the morning, as they were moving to withdraw from their position, they came across a very significant force of French soldiers in retreat whose officers unfortunately had mainly been killed in the engagement immediately beforehand.

The soldiers were in complete disarray and were being rapidly pursued by a number of very well-armed German soldiers from a very well trained unit. Fortunately for the French soldiers, the lieutenant accompanying the Australian unit knew that one of his soldiers who held the rank of private spoke very good French, so he instructed the private to take command of the very substantial French unit. I am not a military historian, but I believe that the unit was something in the order of brigade strength.

The private took command of the good few hundred French soldiers and set up their positions so that they could defend themselves from the German attack. For some hours, this Australian private commanded a very substantial number of French troops in the field. When French officers arrived at the front to take command of their troops and sort out the Australian officer who had been doing such a great job of keeping the troops in line and saving their lives, they were confronted with the supreme national embarrassment of discovering that the troops had been commanded by someone who held the rank of private in the Australian army.

I do not recount that anecdote out of any sense of machismo or jingoism. I believe it sums up a great deal of what we are saying about our Australian heritage as it manifests itself in our military history. At that time we were innovators and, if there is anything left of this spirit, we still are. We remain fundamentally democratic in attitude. As a national characteristic, we are people who are prepared to put ourselves out to help others. We remain people who are committed to the virtues of both democracy and ethics in small organisations even though, as the Hon. C. J. S. Lynn said, sometimes the stereotype can allow a pretty heavy
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layer of larrikinism, which seems to be a dying element of the Australian character. Perhaps the rest of it is dying as well.

I do not wish to be regarded as an apologist for the American military but, unfortunately, my understanding of the history of the Kokoda Track and the period immediately afterwards was that MacArthur was not the only denigrator of the Australian effort. At that time a number of very senior officials of the Australian military as well as, I am sad to say, the political elite were very critical of the first efforts of the military to defend the Kokoda Track. Indeed, they were paraded as cowards.

General Blamey said that only rabbits run, and referred to them as the running rabbits. He observed that only running rabbits get shot. Of course, in the true Australian tradition, as I understand it, the parade at which these remarks were made resulted in something resembling an exercise in serious dissent. Nonetheless, it happened, and it ought to be recognised as a misunderstanding and an understatement of Australia’s history and achievements that started all those years ago.

It is not something new. I will get to the point, because it is relevant. The Government has taken into account the contributions of the Hon. C. J. S. Lynn and other members. We are very interested in pursuing various programs for the development of a greater oral history of the Kokoda Track and other military conflicts, as well as great nation-forming events. Ms Lee Rhiannon appears to be suffering from false consciousness. The Anzac Memorial does not commemorate the sacrifice of the people of New South Wales. It was a gift from the people of New South Wales, commemorating the sacrifice of citizens of the Commonwealth and New South Wales who lost their lives. That is an important distinction. It is not just any old civic sacred site; it is a civic memorial to people who paid the supreme sacrifice in war.

The Hon. C. J. S. Lynn spoke of the portrayal of war in movies, books and television. It is important to remember that the Government wants no misunderstanding about the purpose of this legislation. We will accept the amendment foreshadowed by the Hon. A. G. Corbett, the honourable member having agreed to a number of changes. It seems to me that many movies and television programs infer that the war was prosecuted by Curt Jurgens and John Wayne, and people of that ilk and status. The fact is that the two great wars of the last two generations were prosecuted by people whom honourable members in this Chamber, given our average age, would regard as children. Most of the people who gave their lives in those wars were in their late teens and early 20s.

Society has to consider what those people were sacrificing themselves for. It is my personal view - and one that is probably widely shared - that they were sacrificing themselves for the idea of a tolerant nation, mateship and a fair go, and for a certain irreverence for authority. We should consider that, and not ignore the irony that they were taking the supreme risk. Those young people were risk takers. They may have found it very difficult to live in our society. The Australians who made those sacrifices for us may have found this world equally as confusing as some of the people who undertake this anti-social behaviour.

Honourable members should not think I am going soft. However, we ought to focus on the real significance of the sacrifices those people made and understand that they would want people, even those committing such a serious desecration, to be treated fairly, equitably and reasonably. That is one of the reasons why people laid their lives on the line at Gallipoli and on the Kokoda Track and made the supreme sacrifice. Honourable members should not fail to understand the reason for that sacrifice.

I am saddened that we will not be able to come to a unanimous view on this legislation. The Government accepts the amendments proposed by the Hon. A. G. Corbett because effectively the provision in the bill seems to repeat, although narrowly, the common law prerogative. Magistrates would have their prerogative limited by the trust, on application by the offender, and limited by the circumstances of the offender. Therefore, we would be taking away the discretion that a magistrate might otherwise have. On that basis the Government accepts the honourable member’s amendment. I commend the bill to the House.

Motion agreed to.

Bill read a second time.

Clauses 1 to 4 agreed to.

Schedule 1

The Hon. A. G. CORBETT [7.28 p.m.]: I move:

No. 1 Page 3, Schedule 1 [2], proposed section 11. Insert after line 25:

Page 1186

(5) The court may also, on the application of the convicted person and with the consent of the trustees, order that the person must, under the supervision of a person or class of persons designated by the court, personally repair or restore, or assist in the repair or restoration of, any damage caused by the action that resulted in the conviction, as an alternative to paying the whole or a specified part of an amount ordered to be paid by the person under subsection (1).

(6) Compliance with an order under subsection (5) is, to the extent indicated in the order, taken to be satisfaction of the order under subsection (1).

In my speech I referred to justice. Many people likely to be convicted under this bill will be juveniles and young adults who are unemployed or earning low incomes. They will be unable to pay the large fine provided for in this bill, the maximum penalty being $2,200. They are also likely to be marginalised and alienated from mainstream society and, therefore, the increased fine is unlikely to serve as an effective deterrent. This amendment will enable the court, upon application of the person convicted and with the consent of the trustee, to order that the person assist in the repair of the memorial. This repair work would be considered as an alternative to paying the whole or a specified part of the amount ordered as compensation under clause 11 (1) of the bill.

The trustees defined in the Anzac Memorial Building Act 1923 are the Premier of the State, the Leader of the Opposition, the Lord Mayor of Sydney, the Public Trustee, the President of the Returned Services League of Australia, New South Wales Branch, the President of the Limbless Soldiers Association (New South Wales) Incorporated and the President of the TB Sailors, Soldiers and Airmen’s Association of New South Wales Incorporated. So they will be the people who will decide, provided that the court allows that to occur, because the court does not have to allow it. The amendment reads:

The court may also, on the application of the convicted person and with the consent of the trustees . . .

So it is the trustees who will decide whether this goes ahead. We know that the trustees have the power. They shall be responsible for the completion, care, management, maintenance and preservation of the memorial building and for the care, management, maintenance and preservation of the land dedicated for such a building. We know clearly who the trustees are and know that they have the power and the authority. But ultimately it comes down to the person actually applying to do the restorative work. I would think that would be a pretty good sign that the person was sorry for damaging the memorial. With those remarks, I commend the amendment.


The Hon. M. J. GALLACHER (Leader of the Opposition) [7.32 p.m.]: The Hon. A. G. Corbett talked about the way in which the trustees will work together to ensure that there is a good deal for the memorial. Honourable members need only look at the way in which the crossbenchers in this State can collectively come to an agreement and have a cohesive approach on legislative reform to realise that each sees things from a different angle. The trustees will have exactly the same approach. Some will agree it is the way to go while others will say that the legislation should be stronger. There will be total disarray.

I cannot believe for one moment that the Special Minister for State would enter this Chamber after the Premier has said, "We are going to crack down on these people who are defacing the memorial so that the traditions of the memorial will be upheld," and say, "But we are going to accept this because it is not a bad deal and it looks after people." This amendment is fraught with danger. It is a capitulation, a watering down of the proposed legislation by stealth. The message that goes out to the media is totally different from the final position arrived at in this Chamber.

Let me touch on a couple of points. The use of the words "on the application of the convicted person" in the amendment will weaken the discretion that the court has under malicious damage legislation currently in place in New South Wales. If a person damages somebody’s motor vehicle or somebody’s suit by putting a cigarette into the sleeve, the court will impose a harsher penalty than it would impose for damage to the Anzac Memorial. Under this amendment, a person doing $20,000, $30,000 or $40,000 worth of damage to the memorial will be dealt with more leniently than the person doing $5 worth of damage to somebody’s suit or scribbling on the footpath a hundred metres away from the memorial.

This amendment would weaken the approach of the courts to the application of their discretion. There is already a provision within the court system to allow an convicted person to make a submission to a magistrate on the determination of penalty. The amendment would weaken the ability of the presiding magistrate in that court to use his or her discretion because of the words "on the application". I cannot think of any other legislation in this State that says "provided that the offender agrees to the
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penalty the court can give him or her a subsequent penalty". I cannot think of anything more ridiculous. It would set an extremely dangerous precedent, and I hope to goodness this is not the way this Government intends to pursue law and order in this State.

I accept that many of these types of offences are committed by young people. The youth conferencing procedures in place in New South Wales give young people the opportunity to accept that they are liable, that they have done wrong, and to put in train certain measures to ensure that restitution is made and that the same type of offence will not happen again. There is no need for us to go this way. It is an absolutely unnecessary amendment and I, for the life of me, am amazed as to why we are debating it.

As the Hon. J. M. Samios said, at the right time in the debate it sends the wrong signal to the people of New South Wales, especially those who wish to damage the Anzac Memorial, that if they write graffiti upon the Anzac Memorial it will be they who make the final determination on penalty. However, if they were to damage any other property they can expect the law to be strong and resilient and not allow flexibility in the determination of penalty. The Opposition opposes the amendment.

The Hon. C. J. S. LYNN [7.37 p.m.]: I speak against the amendment. I believe that honourable members may have been working on the assumption that the penalties to be included in the bill are the maximum penalties. We are forgetting that the magistrate will have a discretion and should have a discretion up until then. Each case should be judged on its merits. Without a visible presence of guards some may not know the significance of a memorial. The Minister in his response referred to the other enemy that the Australian soldiers faced in Papua New Guinea. They were berated not only by Macarthur but by his chief of staff, Sutherland. Blamey did not understand; the politicians did not understand. They actually all went to Port Moresby and to the edge of the track, had a look, became experts in 24 hours, came back and reported, but they would not take note of the conditions under which the soldiers were fighting.

In 1992 I took a veteran of 70 by the name of Les Cook to Papua New Guinea. He had fought on the Kokoda Track when he was 19. He told us how the soldiers felt. Even in the depths of that despair the Australian humour was still evident. He recited a poem which indicated to me how the Diggers interpreted the sort of beating they were getting. The Minister at the time was Frank Forde, who had visited for a short period before returning to Australia. Of course he was no friend of Blamey’s, as honourable members know. The poem reads:

A bunch of Nips were whooping it up
Along the old Kokoda Track
And things were looking pretty bad
With our boys falling back
A call went out for Superman to halt the enemy horde
A message was flashed to Canberra
"Send Fearless Frankie Forde".
So Fearless Frank threw down his pen
And doffed his old toupee,
He crammed his briefcase full of reports
And up the Track strode he.
Up through the mud and slush and rain he climbed
On that fateful day
‘til he reached a spot where the enemy
Was a short five miles away.
And he stood on the Track
With his hat turned back
And boldly shout "Shoo!"
And all that stood twixt him and the foe
Was a fighting brigade or two.
Well that was the end of things for the Japs.
The men who fought there tell
How the infantry heard the sound of the "Shoo!"
And each man muttered "Hell!"
So they closed with the sons of Nippon
And sent them reeling back
In disarray and sad dismay
Along the old Kokoda Track.
"We’d rather fight," said the Infantry,
"Than stand around and be bored
By a two-hour speech
And a sheaf of reports
From Fearless Frankie Forde."

That sense of humour and the mateship that the Diggers had was typical, even in those dark days of the campaign. Referring again to the amendment moved by the Hon. A. G. Corbett, I believe that we should leave the discretion where it is. Anyone committing such an offence should be aware that heavy penalties will apply. However, I do not believe that those penalties will apply in all instances. Each case should be judged on its merits. We should leave the discretion to the magistrate hearing the case. He will be able to work out the most appropriate penalty.

The Hon. Dr B. P. V. PEZZUTTI [7.42 p.m.]: I have a problem with this amendment, which is classic grandstanding of the worst sort. The amendment states in part:

The court may also, on the application of the convicted person and with the consent of the trustees . . .

The Hon. A. G. Corbett said that he was concerned about how the trustees might vote. I am a trustee and I can tell honourable members that the trustees meet every two months. We will not leave graffiti on the war memorial until a case is heard by a
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magistrate and the trustees have assembled and voted on the matter. The amendment moved by the Hon. A. G. Corbett is so damn stupid. It is a pity that the he does not listen to debates in this Chamber. He said that we should be more constructive and do more to alleviate this problem. The Premier has allocated $1 million to protect the war memorial at night. Guards and dogs now patrol and protect the park. They are even there to protect people like the Minister who might be crossing the park at night. Of course we are doing something to alleviate this problem!

The amendment moved by the Hon. A. G. Corbett - it is simply arrant nonsense - will delay the passage of this bill for three weeks until the lower House can again debate it. The bill will be delayed because of this banality, which will not achieve anything. As was so clearly stated earlier by the Leader of the Opposition, this amendment is nothing but nonsense; it is grandstanding on the part of the Hon. A. G. Corbett that will not work. If this amendment is agreed to I will not ask the trustees to wait until a matter is heard before the war memorial is cleaned up. Of course it will be cleaned up. If the magistrate wants to impose a community service order on an offender he has a discretion to do that, but the trustees will not wait until a matter has been heard in court before they act to clean up the war memorial.

If honourable members are concerned about the fact that an offender - a delicate little angel - is not therefore able to learn something about the war memorial they can rest assured that that can be achieved when he or she is tending the grass or doing something else around the war memorial. This amendment is nothing other than a grandstanding exercise by the Hon. A. G. Corbett. Government members should be ashamed of themselves for allowing this sort of nonsense to interfere with the passage of the bill.

Reverend the Hon. F. J. NILE [7.43 p.m.]: The Christian Democratic Party is disappointed in the fact that the Hon. A. G. Corbett has moved an amendment to this bill. I do not think he realises how his amendment will totally change the bill. For the first time a Labor Government was going to make a strong, philosophical, moral and political statement about the importance of the Anzac tradition. This bill is symbolic. We expected newspapers to carry headlines stating, "The Parliament is united.

Labor, Liberal, National and crossbench members from both Houses of Parliament send a loud and clear message to every young person, teenage rebel, vandal and graffiti writer: The war memorial is a no-go area. Do not touch the Anzac War Memorial or any other Anzac memorial." The purpose of this bill was to send that message. All that the amendment of the Hon. A. G. Corbett will do is water-down the legislation. It will become wishy-washy legislation which will have no effect at all. We want to say to teenage rebels: Keep your hands off the Anzac Memorial and all other memorials.

The Hon. J. F. RYAN [7.45 p.m.]: I will explain to honourable members why I am concerned about this amendment. The Director of Public Prosecutions prosecutes offenders in the courts on behalf of all the people of New South Wales. They are all represented by the Director of Public Prosecutions in our system of blind justice. It is not traditional in this country for victims to participate in the awarding of a penalty. This legislation will break that mould and victims will actually be able to determine the nature of a penalty. I do not know whether it is the intention of the Hon. A. G. Corbett that such a matter should come before the court, that persons should make applications and that the trustees should meet and specifically agree on the matter.

The trustees, in so far as they represent returned service men and women, are the aggrieved party and very much the victims. The war memorial represents their feelings and values. I do not believe that they would want to be put in the position where they would have to make such a decision. They would be somewhat divided. Certainly, they would understand the specific circumstances of an individual, but imagine then adding to their agony by asking them to make a decision about the nature of the penalty that should be imposed. That is not fair to them. I believe that they would rather not be asked.

The State should make that decision on their behalf, as it does for every other victim of crime. That really is a major problem. Another category of people are represented by the trustees - members of Parliament, for example, the Leader of the Opposition, the Premier and other honourable members. Politicians have never been required to involve themselves in or to interfere with the setting of a penalty by a court. This amendment will give politicians an opportunity to become involved.

If I were one of the politicians that had made such a decision and somebody said to me, "Will you accept the application of someone who wants to do this?", the political process would compel me to vote against it. It would not be possible to vote. I
Page 1189
would be dead scared that other politicians would do the same thing. This penalty has become a political question and that should never be the case. This amendment, which is full of difficulties, contains fundamental problems regarding the legal system. I know that the Leader of the Government has been instructed by the Premier to accept this amendment. I in no way wish to cast aspersions on him, and I accept the intent of the Government in introducing this legislation. However, I do not believe that it has fully considered the implications of this amendment.

On a busy day such as today I suspect that the Premier had a lot on his mind, as I did when I first looked at this amendment. It appeared to be restating existing law, and it did not matter much. But it is not restating existing law. Existing law requires only that a magistrate show such discretion; it does not require trustees or members of Parliament to meet to make a decision. This legislation is seeking to address the penalty that will apply for this sort of crime. The maximum penalty will apply to crimes of this nature and there will be no extenuating circumstances. A person in financially necessitous circumstances would not be in a position to pay $2,200, or make an application to the court for the matter to be dealt with accordingly. I am sure that even magistrates who strike fear and terror - as did our former colleague the Hon. Patricia Staunton - would listen to each submission and show appropriate compassion, where relevant.

I have one other general concern about this amendment. It will create a loophole which the Government never intended to create. At the moment vandalism of the war memorial is a malicious act. If we accept that sort of vandalism without comment it will not be long before somebody commits an act of vandalism against the war memorial to make some political point or to gain some publicity. Those persons might well be the sort of people who make an application and thus evade any penalty which the law might wish to impose on them. They will put trustees through further agony by requiring them to have to make a public decision. These incidents do not happen very often, but trustees will have to make a public decision about what should happen.

Whatever the intent of this amendment and however well-intentioned it might be on the part of the Government or on the part of the Hon. A. G. Corbett, honourable members should not vote for it. It will not create any new discretion; it will create a number of problems to which I do not believe we should be subjected. I urge the Hon. A. G. Corbett to do the decent thing and withdraw his amendment. I do not believe, having been confronted with the facts, that even the Hon. A. G. Corbett accepts that politicians have any part in determining penalty or that a committee of trustees ought to be embarrassed by having to make a decision about some event that occurs within the memorial.

The Hon. A. G. CORBETT [7.50 p.m.]: I moved this amendment with the very best motive. If people did something wrong and wanted to make some restitution for the damage they had done, they could do something practical rather than simply pay a few dollars. I acknowledge that some practical difficulties exist. I do not want this bill to be blown up into a political hot potato with people scoring political points; that is not why I drafted the amendment. Therefore, I withdraw the amendment. However, I ask honourable members to appreciate that some young people will not be able to afford the fines, and one way in which they can make restitution is to participate in cleaning up that which they have damaged or defaced.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

The Hon. J. J. DELLA BOSCA (Special Minister of State, and Assistant Treasurer) [7.51 p.m.]: I thank the Hon. A. G. Corbett for electing to withdraw his amendment. The Government respects the principle behind the honourable member’s intentions. However, we are almost unanimous on this bill, and I therefore commend it to the Committee.

Schedule 1 agreed to.

Schedule 2 agreed to.

Title agreed to.

Bill reported from Committee without amendment and passed through remaining stages.

Motion by the Hon. J. J. Della Bosca agreed to:

That this House at its rising today do adjourn until Tuesday 12 October 1999 at 2.30 p.m.

The Hon. J. J. DELLA BOSCA (Special Minister of State, and Assistant Treasurer) [7.55 p.m.]: I move:

That this House do now adjourn.

Page 1190

The Hon. Dr A. CHESTERFIELD-EVANS [7.55 p.m.]: I draw to the attention of the House the decision of the Roads and Traffic Authority [RTA] to combine three stacks into one in Turrella Valley. It is most unfortunate that Sydney has a poor road network and relies heavily on road transport. Successive governments have neglected to develop rail transport since 1930, apart from small sections. The entire western Sydney area is without a proper rail service, and because of the western Sydney orbital, rail services have not been developed. That has resulted in urban sprawl, despite considerable traffic congestion and pollution.

New technology is available from overseas to build tunnels, but instead of rail tunnels, road tunnels are being built. Although that is a mistake, perhaps small tunnels can be justified. The RTA built the Anzac Bridge, a massive tribute to overengineering, when all that was needed was a couple of extra lanes across the waterway that has little boat traffic and vacant wharves on either side. State Rail has not given any consideration to extending its rail facilities. The RTA loves building roads and dominating the planning process. As a result, the whole city has been inappropriately planned.

When the decision was made to build the M5 East tunnel, the original plan was for multiple emission stacks. An environmental impact statement [EIS] was prepared on the suitability of various sites. A site at Turrella, very close to the present site, was proposed for a 1.5 kilometre extension to the tunnel but it was deemed unsuitable and the least preferred option. Because of public outcry at the suggestion to build three stacks on the ridge of Bardwell Park, the Government, which was concerned about losing votes, without any further environmental impact statements, decided to take the path of least resistance. It decided to combine all stacks into one and place a single giant stack on the floor of the valley where it believed the loss of votes would not hurt it: at the boundary of three electorates. That decision was a cynical, political exercise.

To say that the stack will be placed in an industrial area is quite misleading. It will be in a street that has six very clean businesses backing onto the bank of Wolli Creek, which is a small river. Now that the land has been cleared there is a lovely view of the river, but poor planning is damaging a wonderful resource. It would be more accurate to say that the stack will be built on the banks of a river at the entrance to a regional park than in an industrial area. One of the factories in this area, the Australia Post mail exchange, will close in October, and I am advised that medium-density housing will be built on the site - within 50 metres of the stack. Opposite the proposed stack is the railway, and on the corner is the old Street’s Ice Cream factory, which closed two years ago. Again, medium-density housing is planned for that site.

The site will be used not for more factories but for medium-density housing. The new railway line will also service this area, and that will encourage population growth. On one side of the stack is the Wolli Creek Regional Park, which is being developed into a wonderful resource. It should extend further. However, less than 500 metres from the proposed stack is an urban infill area, which is to be named North Arncliffe. That area could be considered to be the entrance to the valley. At present the land use of that area is predominantly industrial but the rezoning will allow for further residential development. A $60-million plan has been submitted, which includes 22 buildings of at least 10 storeys. The buildings may affect the wind entering and leaving the valley and will trap pollution. The development will attract an additional 5,000 people into the valley, and those people will be directly affected by pollution from the stack.

No studies have been undertaken of the impact these buildings will have on dispersion from the stack. To say that the single stack is located in an industrial area and will have little effect on people’s health is entirely misleading. Indeed, it is environmental criminal vandalism. The Premier must take control of this situation and demand proper environmental impact studies and a whole-of-government approach to this poor planning decision by the Roads and Traffic Authority. It is not too late to implement more sensible planning and treatment systems, but action must be taken now before the M5 East claims more taxpayer dollars to undo the damage that is likely to be caused by this hasty and politically driven planning mistake.

The Hon. P. T. PRIMROSE [8.00 p.m.]: A couple of weeks ago the Hon. J. F. Ryan and I had a conversation about someone we both respected greatly who had recently passed away. We considered it appropriate - in light of the bipartisanship that characterised him so much throughout his work and his life - that we should both speak about him this evening. I refer to the former General Manager of Campbelltown City Council, the late Ian Porter, who passed away recently as a result of leukemia.

Page 1191

I was Mayor of Campbelltown City Council when Ian became town clerk. I have had few role models in my life, people whose characteristics, attitudes and beliefs I could aspire to. During the time I knew Ian Porter - as a local resident, and in my position as mayor, councillor and subsequently as a member of the New South Wales Parliament whose responsibilities covered part of Campbelltown - he was my role model.

As reported in every one of the local newspapers, Ian was much loved and highly respected by people from all sides of politics and also the apolitical. The terms "much loved" and "highly respected" most characterise Ian Porter. He was a genuine visionary, someone who brought people together in complex and diverse circumstances. I admit that during my term on Campbelltown Council I presided over some pretty raucous times and diverse opinions. Ian genuinely deserved his Order of Australia medal.

Often those awards are merely baubles handed out for all sorts of reasons. However, Ian deserved his award and much more. In his 12 years of service - and it was truly service to Campbelltown - he actually made a difference. His attitudes regarding changing Campbelltown City Council, its structure, its overall approach and its finances were fantastic. Even when he was extremely sick and was interviewed by the local papers he did not talk about himself or his leukaemia; instead, in all his interviews he praised the attitudes and the hard work of the nurses, doctors and others who cared for him.

I was privileged to be one of hundreds of people from all walks of life who attended his funeral service. Eulogies were delivered by his son Andrew, and Paul Tosi from Campbelltown City Council, a great friend of people from all sides of politics. One memory that will remain with me always is his son’s incredibly moving description of how, from a very early age, his father had wanted to be a town clerk. He told his children that when he was very young he would ask his parents when they went on holidays to show him the various council chambers, and he would tell them, "I’m going to be a town clerk one day."

All of us who knew Ian professionally and personally are glad that he made that decision. He certainly was exemplary. On behalf of everyone in Campbelltown, Camden, western Sydney who knew him and are greatly saddened by the incredible loss I wish the best for his wife, Judy, and their two sons, Andrew and Nicholas. Their father truly was a great man.

The Hon. J. F. RYAN [8.05 p.m.]: I echo the sentiments expressed by the Hon. P. T. Primrose. During the parliamentary recess I also attended the funeral of the late Ian Porter. It was a simple but moving service. I will remember for a long time the brave and moving eulogy, and the violin solo by his sons at the ceremony. Ian died of leukaemia after a long and brave fight. It is not an understatement to say that Ian Porter made an enormous contribution to both the physical appearance of Campbelltown city and the structure of its council.

When Ian arrived at the council in 1987, it would be fair to say that Campbelltown was completing a period of massive urban growth. During the 1970s and 1980s Campbelltown had been transformed from a country village to a major extension of Sydney suburbia. Campbelltown had people but it did not have services and lacked infrastructure. For a city of more than 10,000 residents, whose average age was less than 20 years, it had a high demand for but low supply of modern high-quality recreational facilities, such as heated swimming pools, floodlit parks, sports training facilities, and cultural facilities including library space; and its communities were physically divided by a railway line and the south-western expressway.

The impact of Mr Porter’s work is evident everywhere in Campbelltown. The modern Campbelltown library, which boasts extensive book collections, videos and an impressive level of Internet access facilities, and the innovative Eaglevale heated swimming pool and recreational centre are two facilities in which Ian took great interest. Added to these have been numerous floodlit playing fields, a couple of senior citizens centres, a number of neighbourhood centres and youth activity halls, a thriving three-cinema complex at Dumaresq Street, and live theatre space at the old Campbelltown Hall theatre.

No fewer than five, four-lane overbridges cross the railway line. More recently the city celebrated the opening of the Campbelltown Sports Stadium with its international standard athletic track. Under Ian Porter, Campbelltown completed its transformation from a struggling annex of the Sydney metropolitan area to a dynamic and modern regional city. Ian’s stamp of contribution to Campbelltown council was a focus on customer service. He inherited a council that had a very traditional function-based structure.

After the 1993 revisions to the Local Government Act, which enhanced the functions of the position of general manager, Ian reformatted the
Page 1192
council to make it more user-friendly to residents and other consumers. Council staff were no longer organised into departments according to their jobs and professional expertise but according to the services council wished to provide. When people approached the council for any purpose, whether it be to lodge a building application or to book a sporting facility, they had a one-stop shop, instead of having to run around various departments.

Local government administration was Ian’s life’s work. He started as a computer operator and quickly rose to the position of Deputy Town Clerk of Bankstown City Council, at only 28 years of age. His skill in local government administration was acknowledged widely outside Campbelltown. He was a respected contributor and leader of the Institute of Municipal Management, and he was recently awarded, but unfortunately was unable to physically accept, an OAM for his services to local government.

Campbelltown council, like all other councils, and even this place, has played host to numerous political machinations. No-one party has totally dominated the council chamber over the last decade. If Ian had any political leanings, I was never aware of them. He was an adroit diplomat, a patient listener, and the soul of discretion. He was a loyal adviser, but never captive to any one side or the other. This gave him the capacity to win a wide level of confidence, and I do not recall ever hearing any elected politician speaking of him with anything other than the utmost and genuine respect.

His recent illness was a great shock and he fought it bravely. It would be fair to say that, dying at the age of 48, he left plenty of unfinished work. He was recovering from his illness, and the last time I had the pleasure of speaking to him was at the opening of the sports stadium. He had planned to return to his full duties at Campbelltown council this month, but it was not to be. He will be greatly missed by Campbelltown and the local government sector. I offer my sincere and heartfelt condolences to his wife, Judy, and his two wonderful sons, Andrew and Nicholas. There is little doubt that from the short meeting I had with them at the funeral he was not only a wonderful administrator, a visionary planner of Campbelltown, but a very fine father and citizen as well. I wish his family well as they face the future.

The Hon. I. COHEN [8.10 p.m.]: I draw the attention of honourable members to the Tunks Park Community Liaison Committee. The general experience of community representatives on the Tunks Park Community Liaison Committee [CLC] suggests that the Northside Storage Tunnel [NST] Alliance and, through it, Sydney Water pay lip-service to the process of community consultation. Whatever gains the community at Tunks Park have made have not been through the process of consultation but through determined persistence, argument and much angst. The conditions of approval granted by the Minister for Urban Affairs and Planning for the NST includes condition 103, which states:

A Community Liaison Committee comprising representatives from Sydney Water, relevant community and business groups and relevant Councils shall be formed prior to the commencement of substantial construction to discuss detailed design issues and the methods of minimising the impact on the local community . . . The Committee may make comments and recommendations about the design and implementation of the proposal which shall be considered by the proponent.

The Tunks Park Residents and Users Group [TPRUG] was established on 2 December 1997 as part of a precinct of North Sydney to address the unsatisfactory manner in which Sydney Water was providing, or not providing as was more often the case, answers to questions the community was raising on the NST. On 15 January 1998 the Tunks Park CLC was formed and included seven members of the TPRUG.

The CLC subsequently replaced the North Sydney-Willoughby council working committee for the NST. For the record, I will detail some of the experiences of the CLC during the consultation process. Minutes of early meetings between the TPRUG and the working committee show difficulty in obtaining answers from Sydney Water on the NST from the start, and suggest that better construction options had not been considered. The community felt and voiced concerns at CLC meetings that minutes were being sanitised and biased in favour of the alliance.

On 12 March 1998 the CLC was steamrolled into voting without prior warning. No attempts were made to reach a consensus, and inadequate information was provided on a preferred option for the portal at Tunks Park, creating division among community representatives. Requests for information on site-establishment activities, in particular with regard to noise, would not be met. In the meantime the alliance was preparing an environmental planning process [EMP] with knowledge that noise levels would be significantly ahead of earlier advice and Environment Protection Authority [EPA] guidelines.

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Submissions made through community consultation were not ready and the consultation process was at crisis point. The TPRUG sought, through the local member, the honourable member for Willoughby, a meeting with the Minister to voice various concerns about the ability of the alliance to deliver against conditions of approval. A meeting was arranged and scheduled for 6 May, a day before the scheduled commencement of the site establishment.

At the meeting the Minister advised that the construction work would be halted until noise issues were resolved and Sydney Water would commit to rebuild the consultation process. A new waterfront option, originally suggested by two community representatives, was developed with broad support provided by the CLC. A new team of consultants, Manidis Roberts, was appointed to provide the illusion of a change in approach by Sydney Water and the alliance. Sydney Water and the alliance continued to show scant regard for the consultation process at their meeting with the CLC when it tried to prove that the environmental impact statement noise levels were too conservative. A first review of the waterfront option by the alliance revealed that no review of environmental factors [REF] was planned for the change.

Furore on the part of community representatives led them to rethink this approach. Plans were made to issue an REF without any consultation or review with the CLC. This was subsequently changed and two review sessions were planned following reminders by the CLC of commitments made to the Minister. Pre-REF materials were sent to the CLC without key information relating to noise. The alliance provided unsatisfactory responses on the need for and location of a vent, the impact of its emissions and the need for permanent vehicular access into the tunnel from Tunks Park. This led to widespread discontent and the submission of a petition, signed by 575 residents and users, to the Speaker of the New South Wales Parliament. Community representatives on the CLC proved to the alliance that there was no need for a vent. Both the vent and the vehicular access were removed from the design of the waterfront option.

The alliance recently advised the CLC that it was considering bringing a fifth barge into operation and extending construction activities to seven days. The CLC also advised the community that agreement was not required to make these changes if the EPA was satisfied. This bracket creep worries everyone. On less important issues, such as the colour treatment of the construction sheds and the layout of the rehabilitated car park post-construction, the consultation process appears to work. However, Sydney Water and the alliance have shown scant regard to adhering to their requirements for community consultation on major design issues that have the most significant impact on residents and users. As such, changes to design regarding site location, noise mitigation, tunnel venting and permit access have all been achieved not through consultation - [Time expired.]

The Hon. J. M. SAMIOS [8.15 p.m.]: I express my concern at the suffering experienced by the people of Taiwan, who have recently endured the terrible ordeal of an earthquake that registered 7.6 on the Richter scale. The earthquake was responsible for the deaths of more than 1,700 people, and it left 100,000 people homeless. In the late 1940s Taiwan, a nation of some 21 million people, was an agricultural economy that experienced massive industrial transformation into one of the world’s strongest economies with a very strong currency and massive foreign exchange reserves. Australia’s multicultural society has benefited from the contribution of thousands of Taiwanese Australians who have played a pivotal role in the commercial industry of this nation.

It is significant to note that the epicentre of the earthquake was central Taiwan, striking particularly hard in provinces in the south of Taipei. The damage was less severe in Taipei, with some exceptions. The Sydney Morning Herald of 23 September referred to the relationship between Taiwan and mainland China, which considers Taiwan a breakaway province. The President of China, Mr Jiang Zemin, was quoted by the State-run Xinhua news agency as saying that the quake "hurt the hearts of mainland Chinese". The Taipei Government has expressed cautious thanks. Mr Su Chi, Chairman of the Mainland Affairs Council that is responsible for Taiwan’s relations with China, said, "This would be a good beginning to improving ties."

All honourable members would be pleased to note that the relationship between Taiwan and China may improve to the benefit of the people of those two countries as a result of this suffering. I am informed by members of the Taiwanese community that a vigil to empathise with the suffering of the Taiwanese people caused by the earthquake will be held on Sunday in Hyde Park. I would like to express my condolences to the people of Taiwan for the loss of lives and casualties as a result of the earthquake. I also regret any damage caused to the economy, an economy that has become such a strong part of the region in which we live.

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The earthquake and those suffering are of significant consequence to Australians, bearing in mind the cultural and strong trading relationship we have had with the Taiwanese people. It is to be hoped that from the ashes of suffering and damage a stronger Taiwan will emerge to the benefit of its people.

The Hon. C. J. S. LYNN [8.20 p.m.]: I wish to respond to a speech that Senator Stephen Hutchins made in the Senate last night about the recent local government elections. He set out to defame a number of people on the basis of little more than rumour and innuendo. Senator Hutchins should understand that there is much innuendo that can be raised in connection with his own past activities. Indeed, Senator Hutchins should be more up-front about the role of his own office where two other candidates for Penrith City Council were employed, Councillor Cathy O’Toole, who was an Australian Labor Party candidate for Lindsay at the last Federal election, and Councillor David Bradbury, who is reported to be lining up for Lindsay at the next Federal election. Senator Hutchins also gives himself the title of the ALP senator for western Sydney. This obviously translates to ALP mudslinger. His mission is obviously to take out western Sydney Liberals.

Senator Hutchins has obviously neglected to mention some of his own past activities in regard to various election campaigns or, for that matter, those of Cathy O’Toole and her associates which relate to ballot-rigging, branch-stacking and electoral fraud. My colleague the Hon. J. F. Ryan mentioned a number of these activities in this place last year. In 1994 the elections for the Communications Electrical and Plumbing Union [CEPU] were held, which later became the subject of an Australian Federal Police investigation due to serious irregularities in the election.

One of the people who was investigated was Peter Jones, who is now the husband of Cathy O’Toole and, until recently, a factional ally of Steve Hutchins. The CEPU, however, was not the only union to be investigated for irregularities in the conduct of elections. The other was the 1995 Transport Workers Union [TWU] elections which resulted in Steve Hutchins assuming the position of president. When Peter Jones’ union was walking out of court, Steve Hutchins’ union was walking in.

After being elected president of the TWU, Steve Hutchins became involved in the 1995 State election campaign for the electorate of Badgerys Creek, which was then held by Liberal Anne Cohen, where his then wife Diane Beamer, who is now the State member for Mulgoa, was the candidate. Steve Hutchins has had a similar involvement in other offices of western Sydney electorates which are held by Labor women.

Those who worked on the 1995 Badgerys Creek campaign clearly remember the amount of resources and manpower that Steve Hutchins was able to bring in as president of the TWU. Diane Beamer soon after was the member for Badgerys Creek by a margin of little more than 100 votes. This, however, was not enough. Someone felt it necessary to firebomb the returning office for the electorate of Badgerys Creek, as well as Gladesville, to destroy many of the ballot papers. The result in Badgerys Creek effectively resulted in the election of the Carr Government.

The question needs to be asked: What efforts has the incoming Carr Government made to see who was responsible for the fire bombing of the Badgerys Creek and Gladesville returning offices? This incident was recently detailed in a book by Dr Amy McGrath, who is a recognised expert on electoral fraud. Senator Hutchins should also come clean on his involvement as ALP President in the takeover of ALP branches in the electorate of Lindsay by forces loyal to him and Peter Jones. That resulted in Peter Jones’ wife, Cathy O’Toole, gaining ALP preselection for Lindsay.

As Steve Hutchins is so interested in the east ward of Penrith city, where he says he lives, he would also be well aware of the fraudulent formation of the Claremont Meadows branch. This, in turn, became the subject of an internal ALP investigation which was described by local ALP branch members as a whitewash. It has been alleged that Penrith city councillors Cathy O’Toole and Claire O’Neill were dismissed from their respective positions in the offices of Steve Hutchins and Diane Beamer respectively. What were the circumstances surrounding the respective dismissals? Is it coincidental that they happened at the same time? As Steve Hutchins has said, this is not the end of it.

Motion agreed to.