The Greens’ Shane Rattenbury has announced the Liberal bills to increase punishments for assaulting police are dead in the water:
“The committee have highlighted a number of key flaws with each bill and recommend that neither be passed by the Assembly.
“The committee found that the bill from the Canberra Liberals was unlikely to deter assaults against police. So it appears to fail at the first hurdle because it won’t do what it sets out to do.
“Evidence provided to the committee strongly argued that increasing prison sentences by twenty five percent where the victim is a police officer will not deter the crime from occurring.
“One lawyer put it particularly succinctly when he said “It is just a nonsense, a bit of window dressing that doesn’t achieve anything that can’t be and isn’t achieved by the current legislation”
The Liberals could still vote to support the Government’s alternative legislation, but one suspects they’ll use the chance to throw a public tantrum and give Laura Norder* another belting.
* For those who came in the late “Laura Norder” is a play on the endless repetition of “Law and Order” until the phrase loses meaning and becomes just a sound.
UPDATE 07/06/12 09:19: On cue Jeremy Hanson is expressing his disappointment.
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