Page 4631 - Week 12 - Thursday, 1 November 2018
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video
The committee talked to a large extent about legal issues. I agree with their recommendations on the whole, although I admit to being totally unsure as to what recommendation 5 means. It says:
The Committee recommends that in Section 67 of the Crimes Act 1900, a provision that consent is not negated if a person does not say or communicate consent be included.
Ms Lee: There is a corrigendum.
MS LE COUTEUR: This may be clarified by Ms Lee; suffice to say that prior to being here I was a computer programmer and years of experience have informed me that sentences with three negatives are almost incomprehensible to people as a whole. I suspect that this comes within that category. I am assuming this was an error, but I will leave Ms Lee to speak further on this.
I certainly agree with recommendation 6, which states:
The Committee recommends that any legislative changes retain the fundamental presumption of innocence until proven guilty in that the burden of proof beyond reasonable doubt must remain with the prosecution.
I admit that I have been really surprised at the amount of opposition to changing the law, and I was flabbergasted at the view put forward to the committee that it was obvious what consent meant, so why bother changing the law? It is an interesting view which I think many people who have been on the wrong side of this debate would have great difficulty agreeing with. What it reflects is that our society’s views on sexual consent are changing. Not that long ago, once you were married, you had legally agreed to all and any sexual activities with your husband. Marital rape was simply not a concept which made sense.
Fortunately, in Australia now, at least officially, we no longer regard women as possessions of men. These misogynistic and patriarchal views are, I am sure, part of the reason that there has been so much resistance over the years to a definition of consent that implies a more equal—in fact, hopefully an equal—relationship between the genders and between all people, no matter what gender they may be.
While I do agree with the Attorney-General that it is prudent to wait until the New South Wales law reform inquiry has reported before finalising any new or amended legislation in the ACT, there are already lessons that we can learn from New South Wales, in particular how the operation of an affirmative definition of consent has worked in New South Wales since it was introduced a decade ago; and, more specifically, some of the issues that have remained in prosecuting sexual offence cases, including victim blaming assumptions and mentalities, and, most importantly, expert views on how the problems that New South Wales has experienced over the 10 years of having a positive definition of consent can be mitigated and minimised to ensure that the intent of the law is upheld without impinging on the right of all people to be assumed innocent until proven guilty.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video