Page 5100 - Week 16 - Wednesday, 27 November 1991
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children and autistic grown-ups and dyslectic children and grown-ups. Often their impairment is not discovered and their behaviour is mistaken occasionally by law enforcement authorities and others for insolence, for offensive behaviour, for diffidence and so on.
This provision will enjoin all, particularly in the court system, the police system, the judgmental system, to make sure that we think always as to whether a person's behaviour is not alcohol affected, is not drug affected, but is in fact a form of development delay impairment. It is a very modern definition.
Finally, Mr Speaker, the clause does not include social origin as a ground of discrimination. The 1951 refugee convention includes, in effect, persecution on the ground of social grouping. I believe that during the consultation phase of this Bill the Victorian Law Reform Commission suggested that a new ground, social origin, defined in terms of a person's past or present social class, source of income and occupation, level of education and residential locality, should be included.
Those elements, in my experience internationally, are often included as grounds by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees to judge a category group which needs protection. In historic terms, we all remember the burghers. We have seen levels of socio-discrimination against burgher types left behind after the decolonisation of Sri Lanka. I do not want to give current examples because that itself focuses unnecessary attention on it. I will give them from an historical basis.
All of those who have to answer, occasionally, to the appellation of coming from the boondocks are discriminated against, sometimes. There are terms like "westies" and "boondocks". I am sure Mr Duby knows others - - -
Mr Duby: Queenslanders.
MR COLLAERY: Mr Duby says "Queenslanders". Mr Wood is amused. Mr Duby meant that only in a jocular sense, I am sure. I believe that when we refine this Bill we should adopt the VLRC suggestion and have a good look at it. I do note that the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Act, the Federal Act, covers social origin by implication because the International Labour Organisation convention deals with discrimination in respect of employment and occupation.
I say, particularly to the Labor members, that we should get back to discrimination on the basis of social origin because it does relate to employment and occupational issues. On the research available to me, some Canadian provinces - Newfoundland, Manitoba and Quebec - include that definition in their human rights legislation. It is no surprise that the Quebecois do include that in their law because, to use Dr Kinloch's language, which he would prefer, no doubt, as a scholar, that is a very
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