Page 4837 - Week 16 - Monday, 25 November 1991
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TRADING HOURS (AMENDMENT) BILL 1991
Debate resumed.
Debate (on motion by Mr Stefaniak) adjourned.
PROSTITUTION BILL 1991
Debate resumed from 16 October 1991, on motion by Mr Moore:
That this Bill be agreed to in principle.
MR WOOD (Minister for Education and the Arts and Minister for the Environment, Land and Planning) (4.32): Mr Deputy Speaker, the Opposition has some reservations about this Bill.
Mr Humphries: You are the Government, actually.
MR WOOD: Let me put it this way: The opposition to this Bill is due to the reservations that we have about it, while acknowledging that steps need to be taken because of the needs that were identified in the report that Mr Moore brought down. Those needs are well established through that report. Indeed, I was a member of that committee at that time, although I have subsequently moved off it.
I do not need to repeat all the arguments that were raised in that report, but I will emphasise again the different circumstances in which we now have to view prostitution because of the AIDS epidemic which continues to sweep the world. That epidemic is there; it is growing; it is not getting any better; and the fact that it sometimes slips from the public memory should not detract from the intense concern that we ought to have for it.
In my view, that epidemic has changed the view that we ought to hold towards the regularisation, or control in some measure, of that unfortunate trade of prostitution. The world has changed. Having said that, Australia, in some respects, leads the world - if they are the words that are to be used - in combating AIDS - - -
Mr Moore: A great deal of credit goes to Neal Blewett.
MR WOOD: Mr Moore says that it is a credit to Neal Blewett. This is due to the open attitude that Australian institutions have adopted towards the AIDS epidemic - the fact that public advertisements have been run and the fact that we can talk about the use of condoms now as a matter of course and feel no embarrassment about it. There is no shock or horror when we talk about such things - and things rather more explicit as well.
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