Page 5483 - Week 17 - Wednesday, 4 December 1991
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This series of amendments seeks to remove the licensing board from the original Bill - the aspect of the Bill that the Rally found difficult. I believe that Hector Kinloch's words were, "We cannot be seen to condone that licensing board". Up to six or seven minutes ago - two minutes before Mr Collaery's last speech - the best I knew was that the Rally were supporting the new form of the Bill. Now I simply do not know.
MR CONNOLLY (Attorney-General, Minister for Housing and Community Services and Minister for Urban Services) (11.01): Given that tirade against the Labor Party, it is necessary for the Labor Party to again state its position. The Assembly has voted in principle in support of this Bill, which I think indicates that there is general support for reform of prostitution law in this Territory. That is certainly the position of the Australian Labor Party.
Our problem, as stated last week, is that this is a very sensitive and difficult area of law reform. While the Assembly committee had said that changes were needed, we were not confident that the precise details of the model in the Prostitution Bill as presented were appropriate. We thought people should step back a little and let a degree of consultation and discussion take place about the forms of the model.
We are reinforced in that position by what has happened in the period since the debate last week. Mr Moore has now proposed a raft of amendments which basically go 180 degrees. We were confronted last week with a model that was very much the regulatory model, very much the state intervening, establishing a brothel licensing board and brothel licences - that whole very regulatory model which is in essence the Victorian style of approach. There have been some concerns expressed in Victoria that it would perhaps be better to go to a deregulatory model. Indeed, Labor members had indicated to Mr Moore that, on balance, we had more favour for a deregulatory model than for the very regulatory model.
Now we have had a 180-degree turn and we are presented with a set of amendments that would very much create the deregulatory model. That really highlights the problem. There is general agreement that the law needs attention, and we are presented within a week with two vastly different approaches as to how that reform ought to go. The problem we saw in this house and which we hope to correct later today, with a private member's Bill that had an unintended consequence in relation to BYO restaurants, highlights the problem of leaping in on the floor of this chamber to law reforms that are fundamental. There is no doubt that reform of the law of prostitution is a fundamental and sensitive area.
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