Page 172 - Week 01 - Wednesday, 17 February 1993
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MR HUMPHRIES: It could be, Mr Deputy Speaker. Thank you for that interjection. I think that may be the case, although it is a bit unfortunate that when dealing with the commission of offences and people appearing before our courts on criminal charges the "she" should come before the "he". Perhaps they have some sort of reverse discrimination going on there. I do not know, but, as I have said, sexist language has been removed in one fashion or another from that Act already.
This, of course, goes hand in hand with the Maintenance (Amendment) Bill before the Assembly. This is a very simple piece of legislation. It complements the capacity of the Magistrates Court to appoint deputy registrars with a similar provision providing that the Collector of Maintenance may appoint deputy collectors of maintenance. It is a simple provision and therefore has the support of the Liberal Party, as does the Magistrates Court (Amendment) Bill.
MR CONNOLLY (Attorney-General, Minister for Housing and Community Services and Minister for Urban Services) (3.45), in reply: I thank the Liberal Party for their support for this legislation. This is a Bill which at first glance does appear to be rather dry, but, as Mr Humphries was kind enough to note, it does effect some quite significant reforms to the law. The point about making it more attractive for a person to serve out their fine - to cut out a fine in gaol - is a point that is well made. There was a clear injustice in the ACT in that a person from Canberra serving out their time in the New South Wales system would have to spend four times as long as the person sharing the cell. That is almost calculated to cause discontent. So I think it was appropriate for us to bring the penalties into line.
Mr Humphries's point would be far more serious, I think, had we not made changes to the law in the ACT over the past few years, under both Labor and non-Labor administrations, to ensure that the sanction for eventual default on parking and a wide range of traffic matters was suspension of licence or cancellation of registration of a motor vehicle rather than a fine and potential cutting out in default. If it were still an option to cut out parking fines and penalties for a wide range of traffic offences by time in gaol I would share your concern, Mr Humphries, in saying, "Yes, here is a problem. We are really encouraging people to spend time in prison". That is obviously a foolish thing for people to do.
There is the notorious case of Mr Partlic in the New South Wales prison system who was set upon while in the remand yard and rendered a quadriplegic. He was in fact serving out only a few days to cut out quite minor traffic offence penalties. So it would be very unsound public policy to be encouraging people to serve out penalties for minor traffic offences or minor parking offences in the prison system. That used to be an option in the ACT; now we have essentially moved a lot of those away from the criminal process. We deal with parking totally as a civil matter. A lot of minor traffic offences are dealt with almost as civil matters. So cutting out penalties for parking or traffic offences is no longer an option, and that probably solves the problem.
On the issue of "he" or "she" or non-sexist language, the preferred option, where we can, is to use totally gender neutral terms - "a person", "the person". Generally, when sexist language is corrected, the practice has been that, where it said "he" or "his", draughtspersons have put "she" or "her" after "he" or "his".
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