May 2011 - Sydney Morning Herald
New laws will give police the power to arrest and charge an intoxicated person who refuses a directive to ''move on'' in a public place. Existing laws allow police to disperse three or more people.
The Police Minister, Mike Gallacher, introduced the bill, which is unlikely to be opposed by the Labor Party, Shooters and Christian Democratic Party MPs, ensuring it will pass through the upper house as early as next week.
The Greens MP David Shoebridge will oppose the law. He said it would target the most vulnerable, and the government had wrongly cited an increase in ''glassings'' as a reason for its introduction. But there had been a 7 per cent reduction in incidents involving glass bottles in the past five years.
''Police will be able to use these powers to allege, based on their opinion alone, that a person is intoxicated and force them from a public place,'' he said.
David Porter, a solicitor from the Redfern Legal Centre, said the amendment was an ''unnecessary extension of police powers'' and failed to address the causes of alcohol-related violence. ''It is a broadly discretionary power which can easily be misapplied,'' he said. The president of the NSW Council for Civil Liberties, Cameron Murphy, said the new law was open to abuse.
''These sorts of powers make it virtually impossible to provide accountability over the police where it will be one individual person's word against the police officer's,'' he said.
''Asking a homeless person to move along doesn't get them off the streets, it just moves them from one location to another.''
Brett Collins, from Justice Action, said the new police powers would affect indigenous people and others needing support for social problems connected with alcoholism. He said the government should instead fund non-government organisations to assist such people.
Scott Weber, the president of the Police Association of NSW, said police would welcome the ''move-on'' powers, but said it was ''more important to impose licensing restrictions to combat alcohol-fuelled violence''.
The shadow attorney-general, Paul Lynch, said Labor would not oppose the new law because it did not significantly change the existing one.
Mr Gallacher said the law was aimed at individuals whose excessive drinking made late-night entertainment areas unpleasant and dangerous.
He said a Protocol for Homeless People endorsed by NSW Police stated a homeless person should be left alone unless they requested assistance.
Read the article on the Sydney Morning Herald website.
