Page 568 - Week 03 - Tuesday, 19 May 1992
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MR CONNOLLY (Attorney-General, Minister for Housing and Community Services and Minister for Urban Services) (8.13): Madam Speaker, the Government will be supporting Ms Szuty's proposed amendments. When she first looked at this problem and saw the phraseology that is currently used uniformly in the "designated group" definition - "persons who are physically or mentally disabled" - she approached me and suggested that it would be better to use the term "persons with impairment" to focus on the phrase "with impairment" which, as she correctly pointed out, is the current phrase that is preferred to be used by persons of that group, and, as Ms Szuty correctly pointed out, it is the phrase that has been used in the discrimination legislation.
While at first blush I was happy to accept that and I acknowledge that it is the preferred modern terminology, when officials looked at this in some detail I had to say, "Look, I do not think we should use the term 'impairment'" because we are picking up for these statutory authority employers a package that is in use throughout the ACT service because it is in use throughout the Commonwealth service, and it uses the terms "disability" or "disabled". That is using a term that has come up through some OECD guidelines, and there is a fairly massive body of documentation. Members who have seen EEO programs - Mr Kaine had responsibility in this area - would be aware of the fairly vast range of documentation that is generated through this. It would potentially create problems if we were to drop the use of the word "disability" or "disabilities" for this small area of employment and use it in the other.
As any lawyer will tell you, if you use two different words you will get a legal argument as to whether two different meanings were intended, and you can then have some quibbling about whether there were meant to be differences between one package and the other. That would be undesirable. The phrase that is proposed by Ms Szuty - "persons with physical or mental disabilities" - is a better phraseology insofar as it focuses, as she says, on the person. It does not make any difference; it still uses the term "disabilities", rather than "disability", but it is consistent with the Commonwealth package and the package that is used throughout other areas of ACT employment. If anything, it is making a marginal improvement, and it is certainly not creating any ground for difficulty. So, the Government has no difficulty in supporting those amendments, as circulated, in each of the parts of the package.
Amendments agreed to.
Bills, as a whole, as amended, agreed to.
Bills, as amended, agreed to.
TRAFFIC (AMENDMENT) BILL 1992
Debate resumed from 9 April 1992, on motion by Mr Connolly:
That this Bill be agreed to in principle.
MR WESTENDE (8.17): Madam Speaker, we in the Liberal Party have consulted widely on this matter before coming to the conclusion that we will support the proposed legislation on the compulsory wearing of bicycle helmets. Unlike the Government, which we believe is simply following the initiative of the Victorian and other governments, we have consulted widely to make up our own minds on
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