Page 1673 - Week 06 - Thursday, 13 August 1992
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MR STEVENSON: Mr Berry says, "All the hidden agendas". I was not going to start talking about hidden agendas of the Labor Party. It is not relevant. If I do, someone in the Labor Party will hop up and - - -
MADAM SPEAKER: No, the Speaker will, Mr Stevenson. Just remain relevant.
MR STEVENSON: Well said. I cannot comment further on that interjection. I mentioned that John Lark was charged and prosecuted for advertising X-rated videos in the ACT in the South Australian Advertiser. He was successfully prosecuted for the same reason that someone would be successfully prosecuted in the ACT.
The Minister tried, through the power of persuasion, the power of teaching, position or anything else, to persuade the rest of us that we were wrong, that we were wasting our time, that we were really acting like children, and so on. I know that it might be difficult for members opposite to acknowledge this. I understand that. None of us like to be wrong in any area. But we will do better in this Assembly if we listen to what someone else is saying and, in a reasoned way, make a decision without assuming that everything that everybody else says about our viewpoint is wrong. It is not just this particular clause. There are many that are in the same situation, except they have not yet been acknowledged to be so. That is the point that I make.
I still have not heard from anyone on the opposite benches that the code of practice that is going to be introduced later will solve the problems that this legislation will create if we pass it today. Mr Moore mentioned the code of practice. It is an excellent idea. It is being held up as a solution to the problems of the offences that are being created by this legislation. Nobody has stood up in this Assembly and effectively presented a reason why it is not.
Why should we have to put such weighty argument to the Minister, or to Mr Connolly on the other point to do with fishing in the aquarium? Why should there have to be not just argument but tremendous force and incredible persistence on such a simple viewpoint? Are we being told that if it is any more difficult than a one-liner you are going to maintain your viewpoint that everybody else is wrong and you simply will not look at it? What if we get a few sentences, a couple of paragraphs, into legislation? Are we going to be told that because of that you simply are not prepared to look at it? What I ask for on this clause, and on other clauses, is an acknowledgment of what is. It is not a matter of being wrong.
Members opposite have said, "Yes, we have been prepared to make amendments". Indeed, you have; dozens and dozens of them. You have made amendments, I grant you; but there are still more. Some of the amendments that you have not yet made are to do with huge industries, not just small aspects that affect particular industries. Huge areas of industries are affected by this, and that will be corrected once the codes of practice are in place. But you cannot gazette the legislation, even though you expect it to be passed today, until those codes of practice are in place.
I think most of us here have said, again and again, that you should allow the final passage of the Bill to be held over until the horseracing industry, the trotting industry, the pet shop industry, the aquarium, the zoo industry and others have had time to form a relevant code of practice not just for the ACT but for all of
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