Page 66 - Week 01 - Tuesday, 16 February 1993
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It is not delivering justice to women and children who are victims of sexual assault in this community, and we have to change it. A lot of those quite radical changes that I think we will be bringing forward will come out of a long process of community discussion.
This is a more simple matter. It is a fairly straightforward matter, and that is why we thought we would bring it forward late last year. It is a simple issue of principle, as the Government sees it. Do you say that people have a right at least to have their allegation heard in court? Can the family whose five- or six-year-old has, on the evidence of the child, been molested, been assaulted by the baby-sitter, by a friend of the family, by whomever, have that matter pursued by the police and the prosecution authorities and taken to court, where the ordinary tests will apply? Again I should remind the Assembly that the judge will always remind the jury that this is unsworn evidence and that they are entitled to bear that in mind in weighing up the truth. All the ordinary tests will apply.
Can they at least go to a court and seek justice? We say that they should be able to do that. You, the Liberal Party and Mr Stevenson, say that they should not. I say particularly to Mr Stevenson, who has been so vocal on issues of sexual assault and rape and the need for the community to protect women and children, and to Mrs Carnell, who put out her alarmist media release last week accusing the Government of not protecting the women of Canberra, who were being engulfed again in this tide of sexual assault: I challenge you two to justify your position. You go out and seek to make some political capital about sexual assault, but when we come forward with concrete proposals to redress the imbalance in the system and to ensure, not that someone is convicted but that the opportunity is there for the case to be prosecuted and for the court at least to hear that evidence and then weigh it up, you oppose it. If you vote against that, you have some explaining to do to those parents.
Madam Speaker, this is a significant piece of reform. It is one step in what will be a long path of change to the law of sexual assault. Ms Szuty made the comment as she was closing her remarks that we all hope that we see a gradual reduction in this type of offence. We would all share that hope, but I have to tell the Assembly that we will see dramatic increases in reports and rates of prosecution for sexual assaults before we start to see a reduction. The sad reality is that there is still a perception amongst too many people in the community that this sort of thing is okay, that this is acceptable behaviour. Sexual assault of children, particularly sexual assault of children by their relatives, is something that has been almost a hidden crime in Australia. It was not spoken about in past years, and we know that the incidence of the offence far exceeds the rate at which that offence is reported to police or brought before the courts.
If we are successful, in the challenge we are setting ourselves as a government, in modernising and bringing into the twenty-first century the way the criminal justice system deals with sexual assault, we will see dramatic increases in the rates at which these crimes are detected and prosecuted and brought before the courts and dramatic increases in the rates at which we get convictions before we see that decrease which Ms Szuty and, I am sure, all of us would like to see.
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