Page 686 - Week 05 - Wednesday, 5 July 1989
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
What I am saying, Mr Speaker, is that I know Mr Kaine and the opposition talked about rent-a-crowd, but a few people I know who were there yesterday certainly were not there from rent-a-crowd. They are people like Ellen Blunden who believes that this law could do quite a bit of damage and who wrote a letter to the newspaper the other day about it. I am quite sure a few other people I noticed there were not there as a rent-a-crowd.
Mr Humphries: But the rest were.
MRS GRASSBY: Obviously you know they were rent-a-crowd; I do not agree with that. They were people who were concerned about how they would be affected by this Bill. They were concerned about the fact that they may not be dressed right. A young lady who came to see me yesterday had very different coloured hair, all in spikes, and spoke extremely nicely and very politely to me. She was very upset because all of her friends were standing at a bus stop - one had a mohawk hairstyle and she had a different one - and she knows for a fact that the bus driver went straight past them and did not stop because of their hairstyles and their dress. I said to her, "You have a complaint, and I will take it up with ACTION buses. You have just as much right, if you can pay your fare, to travel on the bus as anybody else, whether you have an unusual hairdo or not". It may not be to the liking of the bus driver, but that is not his decision whether he has the right to pick up people or not.
This is similar. You are letting people make decisions that they do not have any right to make about others because they are different or because they have holey jeans on or are pimple faced or have some sign across their T-shirts that maybe the police do not like. I could not support this Bill at all. I really could not because, as I have said, I have seen time and time again in Human Rights Commission reports just how badly people have been treated. I feel that we have enough law for the police to do the things they wish to do, without it.
If this Bill is to be discussed, I would like it, as Mr Wood says, to be given more time, for more people to be able to speak about it. As for what Mr Kaine said about housing, I do not think he remembers that when I spoke about the housing review I said the first part of it would be brought into the house in August. I now find that, as we will be sitting in September, it will be done then. We have been talking to people in the community, and there is no way we can rush this one through because it is terribly important.
Mr Kaine: It is appropriate that you should, and not ask the committee to do it.
MRS GRASSBY: Exactly, and we are talking to people in the community. I would want this to be done in a much longer time than the short time that you have suggested, as we
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .