Page 4458 - Week 15 - Tuesday, 19 November 1991
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is, "I met a miracle". There is also, of course, "The apples - bad company" - and, of course, this could be pertinent to today in this chamber. Then there is another one, "An instance of animal sagacity". And, of course, finally, "Birds of passage".
I think many a young man's views were formed in school and from books like this. When one looks through the content of what we were taught, one can understand - and be a little forgiving, perhaps - the manner in which a lot of our reactions were formed. I read from just a couple of sections of this book. This one, of course, Mr Stefaniak will like; it is from the story entitled "I met a miracle". The miracle is described as follows:
He seems to have been literally sprayed with bullets. He was wounded in the head and chest ...
and so it goes on. That was the "miracle" of Gallipoli. The next one is about a bushfire - and, of course, the person who saved the crop from the bushfire. It says:
Mary was twenty-five, an Australian bush girl, every inch of her five foot nine. She was the best girl-rider in the district; saddle or bare-back. It was Christmas Eve, and she had ridden over the ridge to carry Christmas greetings ...
and so it goes on. That sort of text is what we were brought up on. There has to be an understanding that social change has to be brought about in an orderly fashion, and not through legislation which seeks to punish more than to provide a remedy or a relief for those who are discriminated against. I am concerned that in some quarters there is a mood that people should be punished; people of all sorts, including men who grew up on their fifth grade readers. I do not know whether punishment is the right way to bring about change and a recognition of human rights. Mr Duby, of course, is looking for his name on it at the moment.
Successful human rights enforcement, in the context of this Bill, depends upon either the proven fact of a motive - that is, someone who has fascist outlooks, and is known to have them and has demonstrated that, for example, and has a motive - or indirect discrimination; for example, policies with unintended results. I recall pursuing a number of years ago the Immigration Department on a number of matters. One in particular was its statistics on the colour, in effect, or the nationality of all the illegal immigrants it had detained. Of course, a good statistical survey of that had never been done, and when it was done, at a cost of $3,000, by a professional auditing firm in this Territory, which had never had a job quite like it, we found the most disturbing statistics on how it arrested people - unintended results. Of course, this was all procedural discrimination.
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