Page 1268 - Week 05 - Tuesday, 24 April 1990
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are to be enforced elsewhere, we also can enforce them and we can comply with the rest of the country. But just jumping off the cliff because the other lemmings do does not make sense to me.
Mr Stefaniak went through television ring-ins and all that sort of thing, and said that people were opposed to X-rated videos. The question that was asked was whether you were in favour of hiring X-raters, not whether to ban them.
Mr Stefaniak: No, it was not at all. Get it right.
MR DUBY: The question was whether you were in favour. Finally, we come to the champion, the man who brought this debate on - Mr Stevenson. I do not acknowledge Mr Stevenson's claim to a moral leadership of the ACT Assembly or the Canberra community. Mr Stevenson has no record of activity in the ACT or elsewhere which entitles him now to embark on this crusading role. We really do not know anything about him. He looms large now, but where has he been and what has he done? He claims to speak for responsible members of ACT society. He does not speak for me. I will not have him claim to express my views or to seek a moral leadership. What we know of Mr Stevenson comes only from his activity in the last year and some months.
He claims to protect our children, yet he opposes the adoption by Australia of the United Nations charter on the rights of children, on entirely spurious grounds. From prejudice and ignorance he opposed a practical, humane and important document promoting the welfare of children. In so doing, he flies against what I regard to be one of the tenets of Christianity whose principles he claims his Bill is here to uphold - "Suffer the little children to come unto me". He claims to care for women and children in their homes, yet he adamantly insists that there is no real problem of domestic violence; he insists that women and children are not physically beaten in their homes. In the face of clear evidence, he does not propose measures for their protection in any way.
Mr Stevenson has no record of care for, even of interest in, the well-being of our women and children - and I say "our" in the correct way, Ms Follett; our society's women and children, I suppose, is the correct way to say it. I do not like Mr Stevenson standing up in this place with his unearned claims of interest. In the brief time in which he has placed his views on the public record he has shown that he has no real credibility. I oppose the legislation.
MR KAINE (Chief Minister) (10.33): The debate has been lengthy. People have debated from a position of emotion, in some cases from a position of heat. It has been debated with some adherence to, or in some cases departure from, the rules of logic. People have drawn on statistics, case studies and anecdotal evidence, and everybody has been put down by somebody else because they did not agree with the
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