Page 917 - Week 03 - Thursday, 14 March 1991
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might like to consider adding this at some stage later on. This will ensure that such a committee could not be easily removed or disbanded by any subsequent government without debate in this Assembly. I commend the Bill to the Assembly and urge all members to support it fully.
DR KINLOCH (11.42): First may I agree with Mr Jensen about the huge number of letters we are receiving. I contrast that situation with the education debate. On the very complicated matter of schools we also received hundreds of letters; but in most cases they were individual letters, individually drafted, speaking to a specific situation. I am not too impressed by a couple of standard letters hastily signed; and certainly I do not propose to answer all those letters.
Very reluctantly - do not get worried anybody - I will support this Bill as the best Bill now available. I do not really want to see any guns in the ACT; but, if we have to have guns, then I think this Bill probably takes care of them. I want to speak as a member of the Civil Liberties Council of the ACT. In particular, my speech is directed to one of our members - but, of course, to all members - and I am sorry Mr Stevenson is not here.
Mr Stevenson and I agree on some things, on some we disagree, and on others we are just ships passing in the night. I would like to address the questions of civil liberties, though, that have been raised. I understand that arguments are being put forward against the Weapons Bill on the grounds of the possible violation of civil rights if guns - and I prefer the term "dangerous and potentially murderous weapons" - are taken out of the hands of ACT citizens. The argument seems to be that there is some innate civil right to carry a gun. First of all, I am more concerned with the overall civil rights of the total population to the protection of life, liberty and property than with the rights of a minority, under almost any circumstances, to have guns.
The protection of the populace at large, I believe, is best achieved in a stable, peace-loving system with as few guns as possible - and may that be better achieved as a result of this Bill. Part of the argument about the right of individual citizens to own guns seems to be derived from a misunderstanding of constitutional history, especially that of England - and I say England here because we are talking about the seventeenth century, not the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth - but also that of the United States of America.
Let us begin with that already quoted Bill of Rights of 1688 or 1689. I recognise the problem of saying which year it is, and I will be saying 1689. What is protected there is a basic objection to a standing army. I join with Mr Stevenson, and I am sure with Mr Connolly and all those who are interested in law and history, in recognising that huge and important struggle in the seventeenth century in which
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