Mr DEAN ( Windermere ) - Madam President, I will be supporting the bill. There is one area that I am not quite sure is strong enough and that relates to the provision in relation to alcohol. During the Committee stage I will expand on that a little more. I want to make some general observations. The issue is in relation to graffiti.

Mr Parkinson - Can I ask whether you intend to move an amendment or not?

Mr DEAN - I am not sure at this stage. It was in relation to written authority because of the concerns that a lot of people have where a person in charge of a function or a party, where authority is given for some to drink and others not to drink et cetera, will create issues. I will give an example why that should be the situation. Written as against verbal. I was not quite sure whether the bill, the way that it is written, simply means that it could be given verbally. That poses some problems.

Mr Parkinson - I was wondering whether to keep going now or take a meal break but we will keep going for the time being and see how we go.

Mr DEAN - Thank you. Graffiti is a very serious issue as is identified throughout the second reading speech and I support it. We do need strong legislation moving forwards. I am not so sure that at times we should not provide more opportunities for some of those peoples to display their techniques by providing places for them to do this. Some places do, the Launceston Council have in some areas and it is used extensively. Unfortunately, we have those who want to vandalise property by spray-painting.

The situation we had in Launceston at the weekend with the John Gay property was a good example of that, where straight-out vandalism occurred with the spray-painting of his fence. That is not acceptable and we need laws to cover that. It is at huge cost to the public. For the Launceston council there is huge expense involved and I have seen that council return to the same area on a number of occasions to remove graffiti, and it takes them a long time do it. Interestingly, I was in Japan some time ago and there is very little graffiti in Japan. They say that one reason is that their penalties are extremely severe for graffiti artists. At the only two places that we saw it in our travels around Tokyo we saw people there cleaning it off. What they say is, if graffiti appears they immediately clean it off, they do not leave it there, and that is an important strategy that assists them in assuring the city is maintained in a reasonable state.

I do not think I need to talk about the Met in Melbourne. On the trains, for kilometres, you have graffiti on some of these fences and properties adorning the railway lines. It goes for kilometres and kilometres, just amazing, absolutely amazing. We do not want that to be the situation here in Tasmania.

Mr Finch - Through you, Madam President - did you ever see that graffiti in Launceston on the side of the building, high up? It said, 'I'm bored'.

Mr DEAN - There is a good example in Launceston as to why you need to use other strategies to prevent graffiti occurring and the lane leading from Charles Street into Birchalls is a good example. That was continually being vandalised, graffiti all over the place, crude graffiti, I might add, and what happened is that the council approved a mural to be placed on that wall. It was painted on that wall, and since that time there has been very little graffiti, to my knowledge. They have accepted the mural and it looks very nice, and it has prevented the graffiti occurring in that area.

I want to raise one issue. In the second reading speech, Madam President, and I would like some explanation of this, it is indicated that retail organisations have been consulted during the formulation of this legislation and if this passes then they will be provided with advice later on.

I had the major retailers in this State contact me and not one of them indicated that they had been spoken to or been contacted about the graffiti and the sales of aerosol cans, Madam President. I can identify some of them. My secretary did the work for me - spoke to the managers of Bunnings and Gunns, as well as a trade supply paint outlet, and all have said that there has been no consultation with them. Gunns store manager checked with the previous store manager and his four area managers and no-one had any knowledge of this legislation. Gunns has the largest retail outlet in the State.

Mrs Rattray-Wagner - Through you, Madam President - what about Chickenfeed? They have spray cans.

Mr DEAN - I will get to Chickenfeed in a moment, but Chickenfeed is chickenfeed when you look at Gunns and Bunnings and some of those other stores, and K&D. They are the main stores in this State that would sell this product and none of those organisations - K&D, Gunns, Bunnings - have identified that they have been approached in relation to it. Surprisingly enough, these organisations already have in place legislation, I think in nearly all cases - their own policies.

Mr Aird - They self-regulate.

Mr DEAN - They self-regulate - a policy in relation to the sale of aerosol cans to young people. They control it, they have controls in place. I am interested to know who was contacted and why these leading stores would not be contacted. If they were contacted one would think that the managers, the very senior people in the organisations, would be the ones that would be consulted with, not somebody on the floor. I did not go to those on the floor but went to the very senior people in these organisations. It has caused me some concern. Chickenfeed advised that the police did go and make some contact with them the other day.

Mrs Rattray-Wagner - There you go.

Mr DEAN - Yes, and I have a comment here somewhere if I can find it. They did indicate that the police came to them and very casually raised the matter of the sale of aerosol cans. They did not go into any detail with them. The manager said that after they had left his store he really wondered still what was going on because there was no full explanation given to him that there was a bill coming into the Parliament, but yes, the Chickenfeed manager at Launceston said that he had been spoken to. I wonder how that process did take place.

Body armour I think speaks for itself and I do not need to say anything in relation to that, Madam President. I think we need to be very clear here in that only certain persons should be able to have body armour. I can go back in memory to my CIB days, in fact to a premises at Latrobe that might still be there, a clubhouse of one of our well known bikie groups where we had reason to go and we had reason to enter. Is it still there?

Mr Gaffney - They are very good corporate citizens.

Mr DEAN - Are they? That is good. In order to enter that premises we had to take sledgehammers and crowbars and I am not quite sure what else we took. We finally got in and of course we found a lot of products in there including a lot of body armour, very clearly retained in that situation for very wrong reasons, so it is important that we have this legislation. Very clearly I support that. I do not have any issues with that at all.

The next matter I wanted to raise, Madam President, and I will go into it more in the Committee stage, is the supply of alcohol. In 2008 I raised this as a big issue, urging the police, urging the Government to proceed with this as quickly as they possibly could because it related to a very sad situation in Launceston involving a 17-year-old boy, whose name I will not mention.

This youth was considered to be one of the top scholars in this State. He had a very high IQ and was performing extremely well at university and was going on to medicine or law. He went off to a party, for which his parents gave him some soft drink and the party got out of control. A medical person was the host controlling the party and the young boy drank too much. He then allegedly stole a car and drove with alcohol in his body and had an accident. Thank goodness nobody was hurt in that accident. He was charged with a string of offences by the police - driving under the influence, exceeding 0.05, first-year driver and motor vehicle stealing.

Madam President, the parents were devastated. The boy had never consumed liquor before, to their knowledge, and it would seem that that was the case, and here he was confronted with offences for crimes that would have ruined his life. It would have ruined any career prospects he might have had. To cut a long story short, I intervened.

They came to me and I intervened. I commend the Commander of Police at Launceston, Mr Glenn Frame; he was absolutely tremendous in this matter. I wrote to the Commander and I spoke to him and he saw fit at the end of the day to not proceed with the charge of motor vehicle stealing, which was the important one. He proceeded with some of the other charges, which was acceptable and really will not damage that boy's future and his career. The commander took an extremely good approach to this whole thing. I think that is the reason we need this legislation. I will be supporting it but I will just raise one issue during the Committee stage.

Another matter I want to refer to is finding property. From my own experience as a police officer I believe that it is very important that we provide the authority to officers in charge of stations because there are times when the other people are just not available at some of the outstations. It is very difficult to get the right people - a JP and/or an inspector or above - so I think that is certainly worthwhile. I am surprised it has taken so long for it to come forward because we complained about it when I was in the job and I have now been out of the job about six or seven years. It was an issue and a concern then.

The other matter of interest to me is crime scenes, Madam President. I have to confess and I can make a confession here I suppose, that for probably 35 years -

Mr Wing - You are not obliged to say anything or give any evidence. Anything that you do say will be noted and may be used in evidence.

Mr DEAN - Over my 35 years I blocked off crime scenes and blocked off houses from people entering them with a view to ensuring that the scene was protected, that the evidence was gathered, it was not interfered with and in fact I believe -

Mr Parkinson - Relying on your common law powers.

Mr DEAN - that I had a common law right to do that and in actual fact I can relate to a case, and our criminal lawyer is not here who is currently acting; he might have referred the case. It was a case involving Alexander, Spyke and Keller; Dean versus those three. I was blocked from entering the house for the purpose of taking possession of a typewriter which had been involved in thousands and thousands of dollars of fraud, typing out cheques and so on. An appeal was taken. It probably still is referred to from time to time. The court found that I had a common law right to enter and that I had an obligation to put all of the evidence before the court and they found in my favour in that instance.

Mr Parkinson - What is happening here - through you, Madam President - this is just a codification of common law.

Mr DEAN - I understand why we need it there, to have it perfectly clear and to know where we stand. Very clearly I support it but I would not have been the only police officer to have acted and done that. In fact police officers have been doing it forever.

It was interesting, Madam President, that it should occur and come forward at this stage but I will be supporting the legislation, as I said, but I will raising one or two issues during the Committee stage.

Mr Finch - Through you, Madam President, before you sit down - I wonder can you give me some idea of the council's feeling - is there council discussion about the graffiti that occurs at the skate park over in Royal Park that the young people use? Could you give me a feeling about how councillors feel about that and what that does for the landscape of Launceston?

Mr DEAN - It is certainly an eyesore. It is not acceptable, however. I have to be careful here in speaking on behalf of the council. I do know that the management side of the council are concerned about it but because it is so prolific they see it as a sheer waste of the ratepayers' money to remove it, which would be one reason it would remain on there. I cannot tell you exactly what the attitude of the council is in relation to it but it has been raised and I have raised another. At the skate park at Ravenswood there are similar problems and there have been issues raised with that. There are similar problems now with the skate park at Mayfield. I think one could probably say it is generally tolerated in those areas, provided it is not crude.

Ms Forrest - There are some very good graffiti artists who do some really nice work.

Mr DEAN - Absolutely. Some of it is very artistic and that is what I said before. I think it looks very, very good but there are places where it should be and places where it should not be. I think that is the point we make, and the member for Rosevears has raised one issue.