Page 5135 - Week 16 - Wednesday, 27 November 1991
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As members might well be aware, organisations such as the Australian Union of Students certainly in my day were compulsory and you basically were not admitted to a university unless you became a member of such an association. You had to pay certain fees, and that certainly was a restriction on a person's human rights and equal opportunity and, indeed, discrimination against people who preferred not to be members of those associations.
Similarly, there have been instances - I will not go into them at any great length - of persons who have been discriminated against because they were or were not members of a body. Because people have been a member of some particular voluntary body they have not got a job or have been discriminated against in some way, just as in other instances people have not got jobs or face discrimination because of their race, their religion, their political convictions or their sex. Those things have happened in the past, they happen at present and, indeed, unless checked, they will continue to happen in the future.
So, Mr Temporary Deputy Speaker, I think there is very much a need for this to be put in as paragraph (l) and one of the grounds. It is a basic or fundamental tenet of human rights and a fundamental tenet if we are to be fair dinkum in relation to acting against discrimination. I commend this amendment to the house. Unless someone can come up with some Act which supposedly covers this one, the rationale given by some members for voting against the last amendment certainly cannot apply here.
MR COLLAERY (6.21): Mr Stefaniak needs to convince us about what exactly is the effect of this provision. As I see it - I can be corrected by subsequent speakers - Mr Stefaniak seeks to make it, under clause 8, a discriminatory action if a person is a member or a non-member of a students association and as a result someone treats them or proposes to treat them unfavourably or disadvantages them. I am looking at clause 8.
Turning to memberships of clubs and associations, clause 42, for example, relates to clubs for members of one race. There is an exception there for those genuine ethnic clubs whose principal object is the provision of benefits for persons of a specified race, and so on. You can understand that of the Pacific Islanders Club, for example. Discrimination by clubs is referred to at page 24. Discrimination by educational institutions is dealt with at clause 50, and it says:
Nothing in section 18 renders unlawful discrimination on the ground of impairment in relation to a refusal or failure to accept a person's application for admission as a student ...
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