Page 5093 - Week 16 - Wednesday, 27 November 1991
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
MR STEVENSON: There are a number of definitions which are perfectly valid within this explanation. However, what we should do is knock out this clause, as we should knock out all the others.
Ms Maher: Then we would not have a Bill.
MR STEVENSON: Carmel Maher says, "Then we would have no Bill". Indeed, we would not have a Bill, and we should not have this type of legislation. It is not okay and if I, in talking to these various matters today, can get other people in this Assembly to look honestly at the matter, to look at what they are going to vote on, to look at what they are going to pass into law, notwithstanding the fact that there is Federal legislation on this matter, then I consider it to be worthwhile.
MR MOORE (4.09): I shall make a very brief comment, Mr Speaker. Firstly, in response to this concept of discrimination that Mr Stevenson espouses, thanks to his 1943 dictionary, if he were genuine and principled and honest about his language he would go back to Chaucer, because that is the first record we have of the English language as we recognise it, and make sure that he used words in the same sense that Chaucer did. That is not too difficult for him because he can get a modern Oxford Dictionary, put together on historic principles, and actually find out how the words were used at that time and continue to use them.
The reason he is wrong is that English is a living language. One of the great beauties of English is that it allows us to use and develop words in such a way that they can take on new meanings. In doing so, a great deal more colour and flourish is added to our language and to our ideas. It allows us to develop our ideas, and that is the problem Mr Stevenson has. He wants his ideas back in 1943. He would be at war, of course.
Dr Kinloch: Who with?
MR MOORE: The question is which side he would have been on at the time, but that is something we ought not to discuss. The point is that in this case the word "discrimination" is quite appropriate in distinguishing exactly what it means. What is appropriate here is that the commissioner be given a very positive title, a title that recognises a position that people will be prepared to go to, a title, to use a very modern term, that we would perceive as user friendly.
If Mr Stevenson wanted to go back to a set of 1943 dictionaries and try to work out what "user friendly" meant before computers, I am afraid that our language would not cater for that. If we stay with his principles - or even if he did - he would not be able to deal with computers at all because he would not allow that whole new part of our
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .