Page 1013 - Week 06 - Wednesday, 26 July 1989
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
opportunistically, the Rally - and I do not know how the other parties are going to vote on this - can be portrayed as rejecting a ban or taking a concluded position on it is simply unfair.
It does nothing for reasoned and informed debate on a very vexed issue. For example, my friend Mr Stefaniak referred to increases in crime and all the rest. Mr Speaker, I read from the March quarter 1989 crime statistics for the ACT. On their face they indicate that there has been no sizeable increase in sexual assault matters since 1986. For sexual assault there were 169 reported offences in 1986, 59 in 1987 and 60 in 1988. Similarly, for other non-sexual assaults, there were 652 in 1986, 667 in 1987 and 654 in 1988. There is no message to be gleaned from those figures, but if there were any message it would be that there is no profound fluctuation. The decrease in the number of reported sexual offences has to do with a changing classification.
Mr Speaker, it is not fair to put this issue, at this hour of the day, in the form of an amendment, when it involves issues that the women's movement would like to address on notice, issues that confuse, as my colleague Mr Moore said, violence and erotica, and when we need to address this matter in terms of planning, as I indicated, and we need to provide a full house for the debate, an important social event. There are two members missing while I speak, and none of us here, to my knowledge, except perhaps the members of the Liberal Party, are on notice for this debate. It is simply not a proper thing, and I trust that in issuing their media release on this issue after this debate, they do not stoop to the tactic of suggesting that the Rally has taken any concluded position or refused to take a concluded position on the issue. The Rally simply will not engage in a superficial debate on a matter of such importance.
Secondly - if I could mildly rebuke my colleague Mr Humphries - I do not think it is fair to put pressure on the Chief Minister as a woman. That is really a form of reverse discrimination which I have seen many times in my recent years of practice in discrimination areas. Why expect some better performance from the Chief Minister today on this subject simply because she is a woman? She may have a different emotive response, but I do not think it is fair to put the Chief Minister in that spot. I say quite simply that the Rally will not join in pressing the Chief Minister to come to a concluded opinion on a topic involving so many complex, substantive issues raised in the guise of an amendment by my colleague Mr Stefaniak.
Further, Mr Speaker, the Chief Minister has had the courage to talk about the no-noes in society, such as prostitution, lately. Good for her, if she wants to get that debate around her neck; that is her business. But, similarly, who would want to see a debate on those issues moved at 5 o'clock, after two very full sitting days?
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .