Moroney Sue: Summary Offences (Possession of Hand-held Lasers) Amendment Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeMoroney Sue: Summary Offences (Possession of Hand-held Lasers) Amendment Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 25 September 2013. Volume:693;Page:13744. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]SUE MORONEY (Labour): Can I just say at the outset in this debate that we are talking about “laSERS!”. I just had to get that out of my system because Austin Powers has for ever made this bill the Summary Offences (Possession of Hand-held Lasers) Amendment Bill difficult to talk about without at least giving an attempt to honour the icon thatAustin Powers movies have made lasers into.But having got that out of my system I will of course say that this is a very serious bill and I want to congratulate the member in charge of the bill Dr Cam Calder on its first reading. It is around a serious issue. However I do wonder because of the serious nature of this bill why we are debating it on a member’s day. Good on him. Good luck to Dr Cam Calder. I might take him to the races one day with that sort of luck—gettinghis bill out of the ballot. But why did we have to wait for the magic number to come out of the tin for the members’ ballot instead of this being a Government bill that actually could have been addressed and have gone right through all of its processes by now? The Government did not take this issue seriously enough to put it forward on the Order Paper as a Government bill. Instead it left it up to the whim of the members’ ballot for it to be drawn out. Fortunately it was drawn out so congratulations Dr Calder on willing it out of the members’ ballot.I say this is a serious issue because it has serious consequences. Of course the Labour Party will support this bill in its first reading to go to a select committee because there have been incidents—I think some 120 incidents. Am I right about that? There were 120? There were 102 sorry—I have got a bit dyslexic with my numbers there. There have been 102 reported cases in the last year where the high-powered laser beams have been used from these hand-held lasers when pilots are landing planes at airports. I am not sure what type of mind gets an absolute kick out of that but clearly that is what has occurred.There is no doubt that there is an issue here to be dealt with. Some of the issues though that the Labour Party will be interested in pursuing at the select committee—and I heard the contribution from the last speaker Mike Sabin. He seems to have a view that asking questions at the select committee is somehow idiocy. In fact that is what the select committee process is for. That is exactly what it is for and we will be asking questions. This bill does not deal with the unlawful nature of it because it is already unlawful. It is already illegal for anyone to take that action against those pilots and their passengers. Let us be clear about that. This is about making it unlawful to be in possession of a hand-held laser in certain vicinities.We want to make sure that that is not going too far. We want to make sure that this has been done in a way so that it is actually addressing the problem and the problem only and not going much wider than it needs to. So we will be interested in knowing what the problem is with someone being found in possession of a low—what would you call it—density or low-power laser if it is not even capable of causing the sort of catastrophe that we are concerned about in this bill. What is the harm? Therefore is this bill actually going too far in terms of having unintended consequences I guess is probably the way to put it. So those are the issues that we will be concerned about at the select committee.Probably the final thing that I will say on this bill is that I will not be on the select committee as a permanent member to hear the submissions on this bill. That is probably a good thing because whenever I think about this bill I am inclined to want to say “laSER!” and that might get a bit on the nerves of a select committee. So it is probably a good thing that I will not be there for the submissions but I wish the select committee all the best in its deliberations.