Beckles: Govt misleading public on proposed age increases and penalties

Akash Sama­roo

Lead Ed­i­tor-Pol­i­tics

akash.sama­[email protected]

Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les says the Gov­ern­ment is mis­lead­ing the pub­lic by pre­sent­ing its pro­posed in­creas­es in the le­gal ages for al­co­hol, to­bac­co, cannabis and gam­bling pri­mar­i­ly as mea­sures to pro­tect young peo­ple, ar­gu­ing that the leg­is­la­tion goes much fur­ther by cre­at­ing new of­fences and im­pos­ing sig­nif­i­cant­ly tougher penal­ties.

“It is deeply mis­lead­ing to sell this as sim­ply a Bill to ‘pro­tect young peo­ple’ by rais­ing age lim­its, when the leg­is­la­tion goes much fur­ther, cre­at­ing new of­fences, ex­pos­ing young peo­ple to fines of up to $50,000, in­tro­duc­ing fixed penal­ty no­tices and re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion re­quire­ments, and dra­mat­i­cal­ly in­creas­ing penal­ties across mul­ti­ple laws,” Beck­les said.

The Op­po­si­tion Leader raised the con­cerns ahead of the Gov­ern­ment’s in­tro­duc­tion of the Mis­cel­la­neous Pro­vi­sions Bill, which pro­pos­es amend­ments across sev­en pieces of leg­is­la­tion deal­ing with al­co­hol, cannabis, dan­ger­ous drugs, to­bac­co, gam­bling, pri­vate mem­bers’ clubs and the pro­tec­tion of chil­dren.

Among the ma­jor changes, the le­gal age for al­co­hol and to­bac­co would in­crease from 18 to 21, while the thresh­old for cannabis and gam­bling would rise to 25.

But Beck­les said the de­bate should not be con­fined to whether those age lim­its should be in­creased.

She point­ed to pro­vi­sions un­der which peo­ple be­tween 18 and 21 who con­sume al­co­hol or pos­sess to­bac­co could face fines of up to $50,000, while peo­ple be­tween 18 and 25 who use or pos­sess cannabis could al­so face sub­stan­tial penal­ties.

The Bill al­so pro­pos­es sig­nif­i­cant­ly in­creased penal­ties for sev­er­al oth­er of­fences, in­clud­ing a fine of up to $5 mil­lion and sev­en years’ im­pris­on­ment for un­li­censed re­mote gam­bling.

Beck­les said changes of that mag­ni­tude re­quired greater pub­lic scruti­ny and ques­tioned what con­sul­ta­tion had tak­en place be­fore the leg­is­la­tion was brought to Par­lia­ment.

“Where was the con­sul­ta­tion? Where is the na­tion­al con­ver­sa­tion? When did the peo­ple get the op­por­tu­ni­ty to prop­er­ly ex­am­ine these pro­vi­sions be­fore they are rushed through Par­lia­ment?”

Beck­les al­so ques­tioned whether some of the pro­posed pun­ish­ments were pro­por­tion­ate, ar­gu­ing that cer­tain penal­ties were more se­vere than those at­tached to some of­fences in­volv­ing as­sault or threats of vi­o­lence.

She chal­lenged the Gov­ern­ment to ex­plain the ba­sis for im­pos­ing such sub­stan­tial penal­ties, par­tic­u­lar­ly on young adults who would pre­vi­ous­ly have been legal­ly per­mit­ted to en­gage in some of the ac­tiv­i­ties now be­ing re­strict­ed.

Beck­les de­scribed the Gov­ern­ment’s ap­proach as part of what she called a “rolling as­sault on de­mo­c­ra­t­ic ac­count­abil­i­ty,” ar­gu­ing that Par­lia­ment should not be used to push through far-reach­ing changes with­out suf­fi­cient scruti­ny, con­sul­ta­tion or na­tion­al de­bate.