Page 3704 - Week 13 - Tuesday, 15 October 1991
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
It is the model that embraced a Rally election commitment. If you go through our pink booklet you will find there an election commitment to a mental health advocate and a community advocate. I am very pleased. I have kept, in fact, a little passage from one of the original submissions where it was proposed that the title would, for convenience, and for reasons of less confusion, be "Community Advocate". I like to think that something actually came out of that much reviled electoral process before the last election by dint of all those public meetings. The very strong advocates of this legislation, some of whom are present in the chamber tonight, and some of whom have been ever present the last few days with their submissions, pressed us all during the election campaign on what we were going to do in that much neglected area.
Well, this is the time when the dividend out of self-government comes about for the people of the ACT. This is a dividend from self-government, a dividend from the much reviled election. Whatever people say about the people in this chamber, to my knowledge this legislation has had the full support of the colleagues that I worked with when we were in the Alliance Government. I am quite sure that the Labor Party support it as well. Of course, Mr Moore, as a former member of the Residents Rally, has already endorsed, in principle, the notions that this legislation represents. Mr Speaker, the youth advocate is to be absorbed into this process. With it go the funds, and that is an innovative attempt to deal with some complexity and overlap, and to have the money travel around to the best possible extent.
Today a number of amendments have been foreshadowed - amendments that one would expect for legislation drafted from an entirely new base. One of the foreshadowed amendments to be moved by the Attorney, which is supported by most of the informed commentators - I believe that it will receive the support of my colleagues in the Liberal Party - is that the paramountcy principles be expressed. Where there is a dealing with a person in a guardianship situation, the person's views and wishes, so far as they can be ascertained, should receive paramount consideration.
In the Christian moral sense, where there will be considerable attention given to this legislation, clearly there is a great emphasis on the sanctity of the human view and the human condition. It is enshrined there in the foreshadowed amendments which the Attorney will bring forward. There are numerous other machinery amendments, minor presentational amendments, that one would expect. This is no reflection whatsoever on the draftspersons, or those dealing with it from the Law Office. I anticipate that they will make for a much better Bill passage.
Mr Speaker, there has been considerable attention focused, particularly from some of the community representatives, on the physical location of this function. Courts, for many of us, are regarded as antiseptic. They are regarded as adversarial, regrettably, and they are not seen to be a
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .