Page 3165 - Week 12 - Wednesday, 18 November 1992
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PROSTITUTION BILL 1992
[COGNATE BILL:
PROSTITUTION (CONSEQUENTIAL AMENDMENTS) BILL 1992]
Debate resumed from 8 April 1992, on motion by Mr Moore:
That this Bill be agreed to in principle.
MADAM SPEAKER: Is it the wish of the Assembly to debate this order of the day concurrently with the Prostitution (Consequential Amendments) Bill 1992? There being no objection, that course will be followed. I remind members that in debating order of the day No. 1 they may also address their remarks to order of the day No. 2.
MR CONNOLLY (Attorney-General, Minister for Housing and Community Services and Minister for Urban Services) (10.59): I will be moving a series of amendments to these two Bills. I will be reading a formal speech, something by way of a second reading speech to those amendments. Before embarking on that formal process I would like to make some brief introductory remarks. I think the process by which this Assembly has dealt with this very difficult issue of the way in which society regulates prostitution is a method which reflects credit on this Assembly. As members would be aware, in the First Assembly an all-party committee met and provided some recommendations that we look at decriminalising prostitution. Mr Moore was the chair of that committee. While there was a little confusion towards the end of the last Assembly, with a couple of Bills coming in quick succession, what happened in the Second Assembly was that Mr Moore, earlier this year, introduced a substantial private members Bill which provided, in effect, for the decriminalisation of prostitution and some significant public health safeguards to coincide with that decriminalisation.
The Government said at the time that we did not want a quick and hasty debate on that issue; it was far too important. We took that private members Bill to the ACT Government Law Office and used the resources available to the Law Office, which always are rather more than the resources available to private members, to produce a major discussion paper listing a series of recommended changes. Those recommended changes, essentially, are consistent with the broad approach of Mr Moore's decriminalisation Bill, but we think that they improve the Bill, with some substantial additional public health safeguards and some additional safeguards in relation to the way in which we do regulate this industry, in essence saying that this is an industry that needs perhaps, at least in the early stages, to be dealt with more cautiously than any other lawful industry. We also had in mind when we were preparing those amendments a recommendation that had been made around the country in relation to the way in which we deal with this issue of prostitution.
I have circulated to members a list of amendments; but, as will become apparent from the debate, there has been a series of both bilateral discussions between Mr Moore and me and all-party discussions involving the two relevant opposition spokespersons, Mr Humphries and Mrs Carnell. I think we are at a point where we have general agreement on a piece of legislation which could otherwise have been very contentious and on which a lot of cheap political points could have been made.
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