Page 4826 - Week 16 - Monday, 25 November 1991
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through the literature of law reform. As those who have worked in this area know, you can go back to the ALRC report - I think it is No. 38 - which says that a witness shall be entitled to an interpreter unless the court orders otherwise. This Federal report says, at page 62, paragraph 3.8.1:
In 1982, the Commission -
the New South Wales Law Reform Commission -
recommended that judicial reluctance to allow the use of an interpreter should be dealt with by ...
It gave the usual recommendations. How many voices does it take to get reform in this country? I am concerned that we have opposite us a Labor Party that has taken such an extraordinary attitude today.
This situation, as Mrs Grassby mentioned, does not affect only those who have come to us from other cultures. In my reform I am also talking about the situation of the deaf, the hearing impaired and others. We all know the statistic; we hear it all the time. One in ten of us in this community has some form of impairment of sight or hearing or speech. I bought a new pair of spectacles last week. We are deteriorating in the great faculties given us.
Mrs Grassby: That is for sure about you, Bernard.
MR COLLAERY: Yes, Mrs Grassby, I gave you that. I thought you would be the one who would recognise it first. We were attending to that circumstance; we have had the Year of the Disabled, and all those years of recognition. It is now past the stage where we should have indignation meetings and indignation speeches. I like to see action. If Mr Connolly calls that knee-jerk stunts, so be it.
I believe that the Labor Party is a disgrace. I could not think of anything worse today than to have seen what they have done on this issue. I am not, contrary to what Mr Connolly thinks, going to put out some mischievous press release, or go down to the Ethnic Communities Council and say, "Look at them". I do not do that, and Mrs Grassby knows that.
I went on radio today at the invitation of Elaine Harris, a marvellous journalist whom we appointed to the Parole Board in our time, a great journalist who does a great manner of things demanded of her in a most demanding profession. She was interested to hear our comments on this matter, and I made it as non-partisan as I could. That was following Mr Connolly's extraordinary and unpleasant allegations about the Alliance Government and our court reform attempts.
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