Page 3838 - Week 14 - Thursday, 10 December 1992
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Mr Westende, I am sure, will enjoy seeing the Dutch dancers on that day. We may even be able to get Mr Westende up to dance for us in a pair of clogs. Madam Speaker, I join with the Chief Minister to congratulate Mr Rebikoff on his election. As a very good friend, I am very thrilled on his behalf and on behalf of the people of Canberra.
Mr Vic Rebikoff : Death Penalty
MR HUMPHRIES (4.41): I want to briefly endorse the comments made about Mr Rebikoff. I, like others, have worked with him on this side of the chamber, and I can only endorse those comments. I, however, have risen for another purpose, and that is to remind the Assembly that today, as well as being the beginning of the International Year of the World's Indigenous Peoples, is International Human Rights Day. It is, I am advised by the Attorney-General, the forty-fourth anniversary of the signing of the International Declaration of Human Rights in San Francisco in 1948.
Of course, one of the more important questions which have been focused on recently - and it was focused on at a vigil last night outside the US Embassy which I and Mr Connolly attended and in a follow-up presentation to officials at the US Embassy today - is the question of the death penalty in certain countries of the world, particularly in the United States. It is a sad reflection, Madam Speaker, of the state of the world that, although the number of countries which continue to use the death penalty as an instrument of judicial and criminal policy is dwindling, still the country which perhaps most sets the tone of leadership across the world, the United States, regrettably continues to use the death penalty quite extensively. There are only a few countries in that category. I think Japan is one. I cannot think of any other major Western countries that still use the death penalty, but the United States certainly does.
As late as today, regrettably - today being International Human Rights Day - there is one convicted criminal in the United States, Mr Timothy Bunch, who is due to die, to be executed, I think in Pennsylvania. I think that it would be appropriate for us to pause to remember that it is still the case that people are in this position; that governments are continuing to impose this penalty on citizens. It is very difficult for the United States to set an example and to exert moral leadership in the world - to put itself, as it were, above other countries in the world and ask those other countries to follow its example - when it pursues a policy which I think many of us would describe as barbaric. Many Third World countries, of course, continue to execute so-called criminals for political reasons, and it is not infrequent that those countries cite the fact that the death penalty is still used around the world in places such as the United States as support for their own policy of executing so-called criminals. Those executions go on all the time.
We must redouble our efforts to stamp out this practice. I hope that we will take the opportunity in any context open to us to request governments such as those of the States of the United States to put an end to that practice. Australia put an end to it more than 20 years ago. We have not in any way been disadvantaged by that policy, and I hope that the United States will see that it too can profit from taking that line.
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