Page 2256 - Week 08 - Thursday, 7 June 1990
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legislation ... It is amazing that this particular industry has not closed down from that pressure.
This Government ... forgets about degrading of women and chooses to forget about any social costs and says, "Money - dollars - we need them at any cost" ... I am greatly disappointed that, in fact, women have to continue to receive such denigration.
Let us have a look at the votes on that matter on 21 November last year. There were nine noes - Mr Collaery, Mr Humphries, Mr Jensen, Mr Kaine, Dr Kinloch, Mrs Nolan, Mr Prowse, Mr Stefaniak and myself.
Mr Speaker, on the matter of the X-rated Bill, the members opposite said they did not have the numbers to convince the other three members in the Alliance to vote for a ban. If that is the case, how did the three members of the Alliance who did not want them banned have the persuasive ability to force the seven others in the party room to vote for the porn protection Bills that were passed in this house the other night? It is a sad day but, as I have said, they are not my words that condemn the Chief Minister and members of the Alliance; they are their own.
MR COLLAERY (Attorney-General) (11.01): Mr Speaker, I would like to commence my response to Mr Stevenson by quoting from the October 1989 edition of The Intelligence Survey of the League of Rights. On page 5 John Stuart Mill is quoted approvingly by the editor in these words:
The worse offence which can be committed by a polemic is to stigmatise those who hold a contrary opinion as bad and immoral men.
What Mr Stevenson has put on board today is an attack on the integrity of the Chief Minister, an attack on him personally, an ad hominem attack which ill befits the role for which this Assembly has been created. This is a vehicular exercise today to re-run a vote we held another time. For an abolitionist, he has very shrewdly exploited and shown a very shrewd understanding of standing orders and the rules of this house. He is not exactly reflecting upon a vote of the Assembly, so standing order 52 is not engaged, and so forth.
This is a very artful contrivance of Mr Stevenson. It ill behoves someone who says that this Assembly is unconstitutionally created to use the very constitutional processes that set it up to run his particular issues here. They are issues that are in the public domain and are of interest. Interestingly, Mr Stevenson quotes selectively from past debates to aid his cause. In many instances he overlooks parentheses and qualifications that members have used. In one particular instance, in referring to one of the members, he overlooked a qualifying statement before he read the passage out. I think we can leave it to the public to read Hansard in its fullest.
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