Page 456 - Week 02 - Thursday, 22 February 1990
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HIV, ILLEGAL DRUGS AND PROSTITUTION - SELECT COMMITTEE
Membership
Motion (by Mr Moore) proposed:
That Mr Stefaniak be discharged from attending the Select Committee on HIV, Illegal Drugs and Prostitution and Mrs Nolan be appointed in his place.
MR COLLAERY (11.21): I thought that as Attorney-General, I should make a couple of comments and take this opportunity to welcome the establishment of the committee and Mr Moore's continuing chair of it.
I wish to mention a couple of matters. Firstly, the relevance of the committee to current concerns in the police and justice area. There was a report by the Australian Federal Police last year on prostitution and brothels in the ACT. I have had access to that report. Additionally, it falls to me as Attorney to otherwise authorise prosecutions in the Territory. We have adopted the policies of former governments to authorise the Director of Public Prosecutions, Mr Weinberg himself, to issue the consents to prosecute under section 19(b) of the Police Offences Act. In that regard at this stage, I should inform the Assembly and the public that we will continue subsisting policy.
Subsisting policy is that if there is a prima facie offence and it is in the public interest that there be a prosecution, there will be a prosecution. That policy, enunciated by Mr Temby when he was in office, continues to date. But I do draw attention to members that this situation, in effect, makes the police the regulators of - and let us not put any other word on it - an industry. That is a very difficult position for the police to be in. They officially informed me of that fact again after the Alliance Government was appointed.
There is a degree of urgency, Mr Moore, about the committee that you chair. I wrote only a few days ago to the Director of Public Prosecutions indicating that we would not be looking at policy changes pending the outcome of your committee's recommendations. In that respect I wrote also to the Australian Federal Police.
But be that as it may, I believe that the initiative to conduct this review is extremely important, given the experience in Victoria where the Prostitution Regulation Act 1986 has been in operation for some time, although regulations to set up a brothel licensing board have not yet been promulgated. I imagine there may be political concerns in that. But be that as it may, Victoria is at least a State that has moved away from the state of hypocrisy on these concerns.
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