Page 798 - Week 03 - Thursday, 22 March 1990
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MS FOLLETT: - - - who has been recently widowed. Mr Deputy Speaker, are you going to control them?
MR DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! You can have your turn.
Mr Berry: You have covered it up, Craig.
MR DEPUTY SPEAKER: Continue, Ms Follett.
Mr Duby: Wayne, come on! The only people who are in strife are the FFU.
MS FOLLETT: An elderly woman, who has been recently widowed - - -
MR DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order, Mr Duby!
Mr Moore: Are you going to name him?
MR DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order to you, too, Mr Moore! Continue, Ms Follett.
MS FOLLETT: I will start again. Mr Deputy Speaker, thank you. I have a case in my electorate of a very elderly woman who has been recently widowed and who has family living with her. She is now, I believe, being grossly discriminated against in the housing area. She has been insulted by such comments that, as her husband has died, she no longer has a family. She is being treated differently for that reason, and I think that her human rights are being denied her.
Mr Collaery, as the coalition Attorney-General, has jeopardised the human rights of the citizens of Canberra. Mr Collaery's rejection of a joint Commonwealth-ACT antidiscrimination office in Canberra flies in the face of the practice across Australia. He has given no indication of how he intends to enable ACT citizens to make a complaint about discrimination matters. Nor has he, or the Government, outlined how they intend to increase the current level of protection against discrimination.
I do not seriously expect Mr Collaery to do what I would have done. As I have said, he is, after all, a junior partner in a Liberal Party coalition. He is in coalition with the party which has promised to abolish the human rights commission, so I expect him to follow a course of action in keeping with those Liberal masters. But I expect him to follow a course of action. What we have seen so far is just not good enough. The ACT people deserve, expect and need the protection of their human rights. If the Government cannot or will not support the establishment of a human rights commission office it is not fit to hold that or any other responsibility unless it comes up with an alternative proposition and puts that into action quickly.
I believe that on its record so far the Government stands condemned for its failure to take any action whatsoever on
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