Page 922 - Week 03 - Thursday, 14 March 1991
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The other clause that Mr Stefaniak adverted to was clause 24, in which restraining orders are mentioned, With respect to Mr Stefaniak, I believe that he should reread the provision. The making of a restraining order against a person does not as such prevent a person from being licensed. It merely is a factor to which the registrar must have regard in making his decision. On my advice, removal of the clause will achieve nothing. The registrar would still be entitled to take the matter into consideration.
I think we need to look at that in the regulatory stage. Groups who are concerned about violence in the community may be affronted by removing this clause, or its amendment.
Mr Moore: Which specific clause is this?
MR COLLAERY: Clause 24(2). In other words, it is there really as a guarantee to those concerned about domestic violence matters. The fact is that the registrar would have a discretion anyway. Under the guidelines and under the regulations that we as an Assembly would approve, we would want to make sure that the registrar would be very stringent in that regard, so we picked it up in the Bill. Arguably, perhaps it should just have been in the regulations, but I received very strong representations from the Domestic Violence Crisis Service and other quarters and I thought it should be reflected in the statute.
I am having some difficulty responding to Mr Stevenson. I am greatly indebted to some advice from Mr Connolly, who is a trained constitutional lawyer. He has reminded me that the proposition that we, in our legislatures in this country, are limited to that which the sovereign could historically legislate on is just bunkum. The source of power is our own and we can legislate as we see fit within the normal constraints of law-making.
I am also indebted to Dr Kinloch - I am sure the Assembly is too - for the excellent address that he gave us on the historical side. I was very pleased and interested to hear Dr Kinloch put down that historical furphy relating to 1688. It was a very interesting address. I believe that it is a great credit to this Assembly, sometimes, that across the spectrum of members speaking here we can have that level and depth of discussion from a variety of members, as we have today. I guess we have to reflect the extreme viewpoints even from the literalists, as I will now call Mr Stevenson, of the Assembly. He is, above all, the most prominent literalist, in my view, in this Territory, and to hear a literalist attack the positivism of the law is quite something. A literalist reads the paragraph below as meaning something that the paragraph above did not say.
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