Page 5115 - Week 16 - Wednesday, 27 November 1991
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Mr Connolly: I withdraw whatever imputation you find in my point of order.
Mr Collaery: The leader of business in the house has not risen to support the Chair. I believe that you have asked Mr Connolly to withdraw often enough. I think we are getting a storm in a teacup.
Mr Connolly: I have withdrawn.
MR TEMPORARY DEPUTY SPEAKER: Yes. Mr Stevenson, please continue.
Mr Collaery: And I believe that Mrs Grassby's comments, Mr Temporary Deputy Speaker, are more offensive. She has been inviting you down onto the floor to debate it.
Mrs Grassby: I think that the way the house is going on is absolutely disgusting.
Mr Collaery: And those comments by Mrs Grassby are highly disorderly. Her comments, in my view, are far worse than those that you are debating with Mr Connolly.
MR CONNOLLY (Attorney-General, Minister for Housing and Community Services and Minister for Urban Services) (5.16): Mr Temporary Deputy Speaker - - -
MR TEMPORARY DEPUTY SPEAKER: I hope that you will be relevant.
MR CONNOLLY: Mr Temporary Deputy Speaker, I think that is a fairly inflammatory remark from the Chair.
MR TEMPORARY DEPUTY SPEAKER: I withdraw it.
MR CONNOLLY: Thank you. We will both retreat gracefully to our earlier positions. The debate this afternoon really is a furphy for this issue of discrimination legislation. As Mr Collaery said in his opening remarks in this debate, clause 7, which is what we are looking at, is a clause which has been very carefully drafted over a long period of time. Without wanting to reopen debates about the authorship of the Bill - because this is a Bill that has been worked on over a long period of time and a lot of people have been involved in it - it is undeniable that this clause has been the clause that public attention has focused on very heavily.
The whole process of consultation on this legislation and on what should be the grounds of discrimination has been focused on this clause, because it is basically the key to the legislation. Clause 7, which sets out the grounds, is the key to all that follows, and it has been pored over by members of the community with an interest in this matter. There has been no suggestion at any time that membership of a trade union or otherwise should be included in this clause. Nobody in the community has suggested that as a
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