Page 1606 - Week 06 - Wednesday, 12 August 1992
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MR WOOD (Minister for Education and Training, Minister for the Arts and Minister for the Environment, Land and Planning) (5.16): Madam Speaker, I am not going to go back into detail. This is about the fourth occasion on which we have had this particular debate. People can go back into Hansard to read what has been said about it. Both Mr De Domenico's interpretation and Mr Colquhoun's interpretation of what is meant here are simply wrong. If you want to tell me that an opinion of a solicitor or a barrister or a QC necessarily stands alone and is gospel, then I will get you 10 other opinions that might contest that.
MR STEVENSON (5.17): Briefly, on the point that Mr Wood made, that we do not need to go to a barrister, et cetera, I totally agree. We can make that decision ourselves, simply by reading a very brief section. I am sure that everybody here today has made that assessment.
Mr Wood: If we have simple English we can do that. That is what we are doing here.
MR STEVENSON: I will bring up a couple of the words used in the Bill a bit later on. Talking of simple English, once again it is simple. It says "cause unnecessary pain". The racing industry does do this. That is an offence under this Bill. It does not matter whether it is the racing industry or anybody else. They do this. That is the point. It does not matter that this view comes from a barrister or a solicitor or anybody else. You are quite right. We all have the capability of understanding simple English. This is a simple English clause. People in this area will read the Hansard. I am sure that if this clause were applied to the racing industry it would be prosecuted successfully.
Amendment negatived.
MR WESTENDE (5.18), by leave: I move:
Page 6, subclause (1), line 21, omit "$10,000 or imprisonment for 1 year, or both", substitute $5,000 or imprisonment for 6 months, or both".
Page 6, subclause (2), line 32, omit "$10,000 or imprisonment for 1 year, or both", substitute "$5,000 or imprisonment for 6 months, or both".
Madam Speaker, to shorten the debate somewhat, here are two subclauses where once again we dispute the maximum penalty. Enough has been said about that, so I rest my case.
MR WOOD (Minister for Education and Training, Minister for the Arts and Minister for the Environment, Land and Planning) (5.18): Madam Speaker, we do not need to go through the debate. We oppose these amendments.
Amendments negatived.
Clause agreed to.
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