Page 1907 - Week 07 - Wednesday, 16 June 1993
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.However, Madam Speaker, this is not really an issue that should be decided on dollars alone. This is a social justice issue, I believe, of the first order and it deserves treatment accordingly. Madam Speaker, it is the responsibility of all of us to work towards changing attitudes and facing the realities of properly caring for those who suffer from dementia. We must urge the Federal Government to properly assess the needs for dementia sufferers, to assess the extent of the problem throughout our community and to provide the facilities that are needed that can best accommodate and care for them.
Debate (on motion by Mr Berry) adjourned.
Sitting suspended from 12.25 to 2.30 pm
QUESTIONS WITHOUT NOTICE
This Week in Canberra
MRS CARNELL: My question is to the Chief Minister. I refer the Chief Minister to the 30-year-old Peter Isaacson publication This Week in Canberra, which the head of the Tourism Commission, Mr David Lawrance, recently directed to be removed from the shelf at the Northbourne Avenue tourist office and to be kept under the counter, apparently because the publication included ads for ACT brothels. I ask the Chief Minister: Why does she deem it appropriate for the ACT Government to levy rates and taxes on brothels but not seem to deem it appropriate to allow such businesses to advertise and yet allows them to be listed in a much more explicit way in Yellow Pages? Further, is the action for removal of the publication, without any legal reason, in breach of the Trade Practices Act?
MS FOLLETT: I thank Mrs Carnell for the question, Madam Speaker. Can I say at the start that this is not a matter that has been referred to the Government. As members know, Madam Speaker, the Tourism Commission has acted on this after several complaints. Not everybody shares Mrs Carnell's apparent enthusiasm for these industries. The Tourism Commission, after several complaints, took a decision to refrain from prominently displaying publications containing sex industry advertisements and to make them available to those visitors who ask for them. I think that is a reasonable course of action. The publishers of the brochure This Week in Canberra - - -
Mrs Carnell: But that is not the point of the publication.
MS FOLLETT: Just listen. The publishers of This Week in Canberra took a decision to provide that publication to the commission's Jolimont office but not the Visitors Information Centre on Northbourne Avenue. So the publishers have taken some action themselves.
Madam Speaker, I understand that the chief executive of the Tourism Commission, Mr Lawrance, has discussed this matter with the newly appointed chair of the Tourism Commission Advisory Board, Mr Wright, and they have decided to re-examine the commission's policy towards these publications.
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