Page 4402 - Week 15 - Wednesday, 21 November 1990
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Select Committee on HIV, Illegal Drugs and Prostitution
MR JENSEN: My question is directed to Mr Moore in his capacity as chairman of the Select Committee on HIV, Illegal Drugs and Prostitution. Mr Moore, will you please advise this Assembly when this select committee, which has spent over $23,000 on travel in the past 14 months and has produced interim reports to the Canberra Times, will report to the Assembly on this very important issue, or do we have to wait until the final Australian capital city is visited?
MR MOORE: No. I am actually delighted to have the opportunity to answer that question, Mr Speaker. It is the decision of the committee that it will report in two stages on the issue of HIV and prostitution. In a paper we released to the Canberra Times, which was well circulated and has been the source of some discussion, we outlined the fact that there seems to be very little evidence to show a connection between HIV and prostitution at this stage. That being the case, we have decided that we will bring down a report on prostitution prior to bringing down a report on illegal drugs.
In looking at that committee I think it is important to note that in establishing a select committee without a reporting date the Assembly recognised the need for that committee to have an educative role, as well as the role of coming to conclusions and making recommendations to the Assembly. Because illegal drugs and prostitution are such sensitive issues, the committee has worked tirelessly towards ensuring that we can have a good bipartisan result on them.
I think it is also most important for the Assembly and the public to know that there are public hearings this Friday, and, of course, any member of the Assembly is welcome to attend those public hearings and to join us in asking questions if they have a particular interest in those issues. At the moment there are no further plans for that committee to travel, but I would like to add at this point that the opportunity we have had to meet with members from other jurisdictions has been particularly useful to us. In the last instance in Darwin, I, myself, was favouring a decriminalisation approach because I had not seen anywhere where a legalisation approach had worked, and I was very interested to see that the Northern Territory has draft legislation prepared on the notion of legalisation of prostitution rather than decriminalisation. It was very interesting to see how the members were intending to make that work, how it applies there and to see to what extent we can extrapolate from there and move to apply those issues to the ACT. Thank you very much for the question, Mr Jensen.
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