Page 6077 - Week 18 - Thursday, 12 December 1991
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MR STEFANIAK (5.44): In relation to this amendment, I should say, Mr Speaker, your majesty the Attorney-General, and your grace the duke of fire stations in Belconnen, that Mr Collaery has given you royal prerogatives and things. I think the amendment is timely. It is probably a very sensible way of getting in some important amendments which do have majority support, in the later days, or the last days, of this Assembly, especially when we probably will not have any more sittings other than next Tuesday.
Mr Collaery has substantially altered some of his original amendments in his Bill, and we have no real problems with them. I think that in consultation with others he has made some sensible alterations to his original amendments. "Sexual act" has, in fact, been extended from your original definition, Mr Collaery, which would have counted only sexual intercourse. "Sexual act" now means any sexual act as defined by the Crimes Act. I think that is eminently sensible. "Young person" means a person who is under the age of 16 years. I think there were some difficulties, initially, with your age limit of 12 years, and that has been pointed out and graciously and sensibly accepted by you.
I note that Mr Connolly did have an amendment whereby in proposed new subsection 92EA(3) he was deleting the words "on 3 or more occasions". Perhaps it may be sufficient, for the purposes of what Mr Collaery is trying to do, for a sexual relationship to be merely one sexual act. It is often difficult to prove a number of sexual acts. One may well have been sufficient. We would have been quite happy if Mr Connolly had gone ahead with that. However, he does indicate to me that there are precedents in other States for three or more occasions. Given what Mr Collaery is trying to counter, I do not think it is worth dying in a ditch over that. Accordingly, we will not move an amendment to delete "on 3 or more occasions". There is precedent elsewhere for what Mr Collaery is trying to do there.
The nub of what Mr Collaery is doing is found in proposed subsection (4), and that states:
In proceedings for an offence under subsection (2), evidence of a sexual act is not inadmissible by reason only that it does not disclose the date or the exact circumstances in which the act occurred.
That is absolutely essential. I have had the unfortunate situation of losing, in both the Magistrates Court and the Supreme Court, a couple of child sexual molestation cases because the kids could not remember the exact date, down to a particular time, or a particular day, or, in some cases, even necessarily with clarity, a particular week or month,
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