Page 5492 - Week 17 - Wednesday, 4 December 1991
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No doubt, when legislation is eventually passed by this Assembly to achieve that goal, Mr Moore's contribution will be clearly recognised. There is no doubt that Mr Moore has been pushing this issue very vigorously for many months. There is no doubt that the prime mover for amendment in this area of the law remains Mr Moore. But I do not believe, and the Government does not believe, that we need to be in a desperate rush to get a Bill to change the law on prostitution through this place by Christmas. That sort of unseemly haste, particularly when we are confronted with such a dramatic difference in the approach we are looking at this week from the approach we were looking at last week, is a recipe for bad law.
The fundamental responsibility we all have as legislators is to enact laws that are the best laws for the people of this Territory. Acting in a rush is not the way to achieve that. The suggestion Mr Collaery made, that we all need more time to look at this, is sensible. Our proposal as a government would be to get a community consultation process going on the best form of law reform to achieve the goal of decriminalisation. We have had fundamentally different models proposed within a week, and we could have another one next week. Mr Moore said that there was a third alternative. We might see that next week.
That is not the way to go about law reform on such a sensitive issue as prostitution, and the Government's view, as was stated last week, is that this ought to be adjourned. Last week you were looking at model A; this week we have been presented with model B; and that change in itself might be sufficient to convince members of the Assembly that we ought not to rush into this.
MR MOORE (11.34): I do need a chance to respond to some of those comments. If Mr Connolly and the Government and the Rally were really genuine about the need to ensure that we are passing good laws, they would be saying, "We recognise that we currently have bad laws". There is no doubt, with reference to prostitution, that in the in-principle debate everybody agreed that we currently have bad laws. To remove those bad laws and to provide some protection for children, some protection against advertising, to set out where brothels ought be, is not difficult to do. If it turns out that we need to go further than that, then obviously we would need more laws.
I could accept that kind of approach. I could have accepted the Rally coming in and moving some amendments to provide for what they want. Nobody else in the chamber has said that they support that, although I think, by and large, that if you had moved amendments you would have found reasonable support.
The truth of the matter, when it comes to the Rally, is that, in a conflict between paternalistic moralising and social control on the one hand and civil liberties on the other hand, the Rally finds a way to come down on the side of paternalistic moralising and social control.
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