Page 5161 - Week 16 - Wednesday, 27 November 1991
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that you do not qualify. This is one of the many things that are difficult with this Bill. Clause 26 also refers to a near relative. As it describes someone that you can have affinity with, one would wonder how you can have a near affinity with someone if you talk about a near relative.
Clause 31 allows certain exemptions for voluntary bodies but does not allow a voluntary body to make a choice on moral grounds. We are told throughout this Bill that there are certain political distinctions you can make. There are times when you can make a choice or discriminate, if you wish, when you have certain religious convictions; but this would hold that moral convictions do not have the same weight. I wonder why that is.
Mr Collaery: Which clause, Dennis?
MR STEVENSON: Look at clause 31. It relates to a number throughout here. It is okay, under certain exemptions, to discriminate in the area of religious or political convictions; but it is not okay to discriminate or to make a choice on the grounds of moral convictions. I think it could well be that some people's moral convictions are a lot stronger than their political convictions, and may even be stronger than their religious convictions in certain cases. So, once again, I wonder why in this Bill, as a general rule, you cannot have moral convictions. That is not treated as okay under this Bill.
MR DUBY (9.21): Mr Speaker, as Mr Stevenson said in his introduction to this small address, he originally had planned to remove these clauses on the basis that he had hoped to have clause 10 removed from the Bill. I would like to set the record straight. I have really managed to get this relevant. In the vote that was taken on clauses 10 to 14 I mumbled my words. The vote has been recorded as if I voted to remove those clauses - through no fault of the Clerk, I might add. I would like to put it on the record that I certainly did not; that, instead of 14 to 2, the vote should have been 15 to 1. I guess that I will have to live with that.
Ms Follett: Speak English.
MR DUBY: It might help. A number of the issues that have been raised by Mr Collaery I find very interesting, in particular his mention of religious bodies. I, for one, would certainly not wish to be interfering in the religious practices of persons. If that religion is a bona fide religion which specifies that members of a certain gender can perform only certain tasks, it is only quite right and appropriate that they should not fall within the ambit of this Bill.
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