Page 343 - Week 02 - Tuesday, 7 March 2006
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Mr Speaker, the purpose of this clause is to put some teeth back into this quite weak bill. I have made the point that, if injuries sustained prior to birth can be recognised as having affected the individual after it is born, that is in effect recognising retrospectively that the unborn child was an individual prior to birth when it originally sustained the injuries that led to its death. That is why the opposition is proposing this amendment.
This amendment basically recognises that if a manslaughter charge can apply to a child after birth as a result of injuries sustained while in utero, so too should a manslaughter charge apply to a child killed prior to birth. That is not, as the government would have everyone believe, reopening the abortion debate, but I think that that was the implication of the Chief Minister’s emotional response. This amendment is all about wanting to increase the strength of this bill to make it much more meaningful.
The government have introduced legislation which is at least better than nothing, but in their fright to deal with the issue of the status of the unborn child they have, in effect, produced a very weak piece of legislation. Will this bill deter? Will it deter offenders? What is the object of any legislation? The object of legislation surely is to deter law-breakers and to protect the innocent. Our amendment, if the government accepts it, will strengthen this bill and provide real deterrence.
As the Chief Minister’s legislation now stands, a careless or reckless person or a person intent on directly assaulting a woman would not be thinking twice. We are talking about increases in penalties which simply go to the heart of trying to bring somebody to account for what really was an aggravation to a pregnant woman and the reason for the termination of her pregnancy. We are saying that this bill will not provide deterrence. I would have thought that a bill which incorporates 25 to 30 per cent loadings for routine offences is simply not going to provide that deterrence at all. Our amendment will put power back into this bill, it will give status back to the unborn and it will mean that deterrence is reinserted.
Mr Speaker, if I can pick up on the Chief Minister’s comments about the longstanding practice in Australian law, the question of the time when life starts, he says that that is a longstanding provision under Australian law that has been almost sacrosanct. That is not quite right because the Queensland legislation has changed that provision. The Queensland government, in its protection of the unborn child law, has changed that piece of law. It has put in place instruments which change that status.
Why can the Chief Minister not do that? Why can this government not find the courage to change the laws here to reflect the same standards? Why? It is because the Chief Minister, with his tunnel vision and his lack of courage, is driven more by ideology than by commonsense and the determination to protect the community at large. He would have it that the opposition has been “dishonest”, “intellectually dishonest”, or engaged in some other form of dishonesty in bringing forth its amendments and, in previous times, the legislation that it has sought to bring forward here. That is just—
MR SPEAKER: Order! That was withdrawn, Mr Pratt.
MR PRATT: Let me just point out, Mr Speaker, that the objective of the opposition today is to see that logical instruments are put in place to provide better protections for a
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