Page 1597 - Week 06 - Wednesday, 12 August 1992
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MR HUMPHRIES: Madam Speaker, I reject that assertion most strongly.
MADAM SPEAKER: I am about to rule. I believe that the rules do say that you ought to be relevant to the debate.
MR HUMPHRIES: Indeed.
MADAM SPEAKER: Thank you. In that case I would like you to discuss clause 7 and the amendments.
MR HUMPHRIES: Madam Speaker, I hope the same rules will apply to the Government Ministers who range across all the other penalties as well; but obviously we are not members of the ALP, so clearly it is not the case.
MADAM SPEAKER: Thank you, Mr Humphries. I will keep a close check on relevance from now on.
MR HUMPHRIES: Thank you, Madam Speaker.
MADAM SPEAKER: I will admit that yesterday evening debate did range widely. Henceforth, please let us stick to each clause.
MR HUMPHRIES: It has this afternoon, too, Madam Speaker.
MADAM SPEAKER: Thank you, Mr Humphries; let us proceed.
MR HUMPHRIES: Madam Speaker, I make the point that the offences in this legislation are clearly vastly different. There is a whole series of penalties in legislation which should be tailored to the level of the offence concerned. Some of these are unjustifiably high. In respect of clause 7, there is a catch-all provision, which may well be in a different category. But I certainly reject the assertion that we should not be able to consider the other clauses clause by clause, in which case it may well be the case that we could justify before the Assembly that there should be a change in the level of penalty provided in those provisions.
Let me turn to the amendment proposed by Mr Westende to enumerate examples of cruelty in the legislation. Madam Speaker, I concede readily that this is another case of what Crispin Hull in the Canberra Times called black letter law. It is cumbersome in one sense; it does enumerate a whole series of examples of cruelty, which may, obviously, provide for gaps. You will sometimes find that someone does not quite fall within a ground of cruelty and therefore escapes the provisions of the legislation. I concede that.
But this has been put forward for one simple reason, and the simple reason is that there are clear anomalies in the broad brush that you have taken so far. Mr Wood shakes his head. Those anomalies already have been identified by people in the community who have dealings with animals as a matter of day-to-day business. I am talking particularly here of the president of the ACT Racing Club, who has said, clearly with great concern, that there is a real chance that the existing provisions of clause 7 could generate an offence on the part of a jockey or a horse handler where that person has to do to horses one of the things which are customary at any race meeting anywhere in this country any day of the week. That is why this has come forward.
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