Page 5102 - Week 16 - Wednesday, 27 November 1991
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Mr Speaker, I do commend this amendment to members. I do not believe that it diminishes the Bill in any way. If there is a further ground of discrimination that people believe should be added to the Bill, then that would be a substantive matter, and it is a matter that should be dealt with by amending the Act rather than having a kind of omnibus section in the Act. I trust that members will support the amendment, because I think it does strengthen the Bill and adds to its integrity.
MR STEVENSON (4.40): I had the same amendment. Obviously, it should be deleted. If the Government desires that other attributes should be included in this list, it should do so by a process that comes before the Assembly, not via yet another administrative decision.
Ms Follett: That is what I just said.
MR STEVENSON: Ms Follett says, "That is what I just said". She also said that including this showed a little overzealousness in drawing up the Bill. Indeed, much of the Bill shows overzealousness in the extreme. This is just one thing that Ms Follett is prepared to take out. She did say that it should be taken out. It is a pity that she did not mention that many others should be taken out.
The community, obviously, should have the right to determine or to know about what matters are going to be changed. This particular list of characteristics or categories or obligations, et cetera, is what the entire Bill is about. This is where it says what you can do and what you cannot do. It does give an interesting insight into the drafting of it. Mr Everingham, of the Northern Territory, in the House of Representatives on 14 November 1985 also referred to a similar situation when he was debating the package of rights Bills before the Federal Parliament. He said:
It gives an insight into the collective mind of the Labor Government which drafted and presented these Bills. Genuinely democratic governments do not legislate on what a free citizen can do. Democratic governments tell us what we cannot do and then let us get on with living our own lives. But this Labor Government is obsessed with regulating the lives of the citizenry, right down to telling us whom we may employ and how we may address our fellow citizens and, finally, by delineating just what rights we have through this legislation, removing basic human freedoms which the Anglo-Saxon world has built upon since the days of Magna Carta.
Mr Everingham talked about the gobbledegook doublespeak which is used in various of these areas that I spoke about earlier. He mentioned that the CIA, instead of
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