Coddington Deborah: Civil Aviation Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Coddington Deborah: Civil Aviation Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:615;Page:11357] 
DEBORAH CODDINGTON (ACT) 
: 
 I hope that member will be allowed another call because I would love to hear what he meant by punishing people in way that is not punitive. That is one of the best “Orwellians” I have heard for a long time—that is positive punishment! I thank the Minister for taking a call to explain some of the issues we were puzzled about. I wish more Ministers would do that in the Committee stage instead of just sitting there and ignoring the debate. 
The ACT party supports this bill. I was part of the select committee that heard the submissions and watched very dramatic videos of what happens when dangerous goods are taken on to aircraft. However I think it is coming in far too early. We have not explored enough ways that we can actually deal with unruly passengers. For instance if we look at some of the articles that were written after September 11—and one of them was a very good one written in the  
Atlantic Monthly 
—we would see that it has been pointed out that we take everything away from passengers when they get on a plane and they are not armed with anything at all and there is absolutely no deterrent on the plane for people not to indulge in some sort of terrorist actions and a deterrent for other unruly passengers. 
Hon Members 
: Ha! 
DEBORAH CODDINGTON 
: National Party members laugh but if we take a look at El-Al the Israeli airline—how many million people in the world would like to blow that out of the sky—it has air marshals; it has deterrents; it has very very strict security and very well trained and well-aware people who travel on that airline. If a person were on a plane and there was the chance that in every seat there was a passenger who might be armed who is a law-abiding citizen it would perhaps deter that person from getting intoxicated and starting to attack people. If that is going to far—I am just suggesting these things and the Minister is looking pretty aghast—the officials could have considered the position of arming the aircrew. 
We had a classic incident on a Qantas flight last year where the aircrew were attacked with a pair of sharpened chopsticks. This poor air steward had nothing to defend himself with except his hands. That could have brought down the whole plane. That plane could have easily come down. What do we do? We continue to strip people of any form of self-defence when they go on to an aircraft. They are not even allowed a pair of tweezers any more. I would like the Minister to tell us whether any research was done on this. Maybe we could put it to democracy and ask the passengers what they think but then this Government does not favour “one person one vote”. So we had better not risk that. 
I would like the Minister to take a call to tell us what research went into this and whether he used the officials to look outside the square and to examine other alternatives. I believe there is some merit in revisiting the situation where we actually take all forms of self-defence off people when they go on to an aeroplane. I think there is another way that we could deter people. The bill states that it is the purpose to deter certain types of unruly behaviour that might occur on aircraft. I think there are other creative ways that we could look at this. 
I remember just after September 11 when some passengers boarded a plane in the United States to fly somewhere and the pilot instead of just saying: “Good morning ladies and gentlemen thank you for flying with us.” said: “Don’t be nervous. If anyone gets up and decides to hijack this plane you all band together and use whatever you can to attack that person.”