Page 67 - Week 01 - Tuesday, 16 February 1993
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Madam Speaker, I thank members for their support for the other propositions in this Bill in relation to interpreters in the system, and I also foreshadow that I will be moving an amendment. This Bill contains also a provision to remove the sunset clause on video evidence. When it became apparent last year that the Opposition had difficulty in principle with this aspect of the Bill - the issue of getting the evidence of a child before a court - we agreed that it would be better that we bring forward a separate Bill to repeal the sunset provision for video evidence. That could then go through without the sort of acrimonious debate which, unfortunately, an issue of this importance is bound to produce. We have already dealt with the removal of the sunset clause on the video evidence provision, and clause 8 of the Bill is redundant. I will therefore be moving an amendment to repeal that.
Question resolved in the affirmative.
Bill agreed to in principle.
Detail Stage
Clauses 1 to 5, by leave, taken together, and agreed to.
Clause 6
MR HUMPHRIES (9.22): I move:
Page 3, line 2, after "subsection (3)" add: "and substituting the following subsection:
'(3) Where the evidence of a child under the age of 7 years is admitted under subsection (1) on the trial of a person charged with an offence, that evidence shall be disregarded unless it is corroborated by other evidence implicating the person.'".
Madam Speaker, I do admire Mr Connolly on occasions. I wish I had the capacity to come before this Assembly on matters of enormous moral and emotional complexity with the certainty that he exudes on these matters, with the belief that these things are not really complex at all, that there are not many infinite shades of grey and great questions of balance to be resolved here; and to say, "This is the right answer. I know where I am going, and pow, off I go in that direction".
Mr Connolly: We are in the Labor Party, mate.
MR HUMPHRIES: Well, that says it all, does it not? If you believe in the Labor Party you are very close to God. You can decide whatever you want, and anybody who disagrees with you must be completely wrong because they are not of the same point of view.
Madam Speaker, I did not present my concern about this Bill as some kind of crusade. I presented it having listened to people in the community who deal with this area - more, I might say, than it appears the Minister has done - and come to the conclusion that there are very complex questions which are not fully resolved by this change in the law. Mr Connolly might not be aware of what they are.
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