Page 4456 - Week 15 - Tuesday, 19 November 1991
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ADJOURNMENT
MR SPEAKER: Order! It being 9.30 pm, I propose the question:
That the Assembly do now adjourn.
Mr Berry: I require the question to be put forthwith without debate.
Question resolved in the negative.
HUMAN RIGHTS AND EQUAL OPPORTUNITY BILL 1991
Debate resumed.
MR COLLAERY: Then, finally, he said to her after they had married:
To prove your love I spent my cheque
To buy this swell rig-out;
So fling your arms about my neck
For I'm a rouseabout!
And she "sank into his arms". He ends the poem with:
... if she wasn't satisfied
She never let it out.
No gender group in this community has a mortgage on human rights or the advancement of the causes of women. Implicit in Ms Follett's introduction speech there was a suggestion that, of course, she had to introduce the subject of human rights in the Assembly. I give Australian women their credit. Katherine Susannah Prichard gave her first public speech in London after the turn of the century. She said to the St Ives Primrose League in London:
Every day, the women of Australia are making history, proving to the world that women's power in public affairs is for good; that when women vote a great power for the purification and betterment of public life is brought into play.
They are noble sentiments; but she was not a member of the Labor Party, not by a mile. Then, of course, there is the tide of men. In Oscar Wilde's trial the QC said to him, "Did you ever adore a man?". "No", replied Oscar, "I have never adored anyone but myself" - and there was laughter in the court.
Mr Speaker, the process of the development of human rights is varied and an aggregate of the emotions of the community. It does not relate to any modern day left wing of the Labor Party. Mr Connolly is amused. He just told me that he liked the book by George Bernard Shaw, The Intelligent Woman's Guide to Socialism, Capitalism, Sovietism and Fascism.
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